Microorganisms bioprospection: Anew tendency in microbial ecology
Résumé
Since long ago the men have been using plants, animals and also microorganisms as source of chemicals and products for his interest. With the recent development in the exploration of the microbiological and genetical world, this resource became still more promising, and stimulated a new area of research, the bioprospection. Roughly speaking it comprises the search of new economically viable compounds, produced via catabolic reactions, which can be efficiently manipulated and applied to some chemical process of interest in the industry, health or environment. As an example of new trends on Ecology Microbiology, this chapter is concerned on the bioprospection of bacteria, looking forbiocatalysts to prepare pure enantiomerically compounds, to be applied on pharmacology, and hydrocarbonoclastic consortia, to be applied on bioremediation of oil contaminated environments. 106 bacteria strains, with potential for synthesis of chiral molecules, were obtained using 8 different carbon sources (4 nitriles, 2 alcohols and 2 ketones). Moreover, 5 bacteria strains, capable of degrading hydrocarbon compounds (between 16 - 45%) in laboratory conditions, were also isolated from a hydrocarbonoclastic consortium. Unexpectedly, when this consortium was applied to some in situ microcosms (planted on a mangrove ecosystem) the oil compounds were not reduced significantly. This result shows the necessity of making in situ experiments to test the real potentiality of the microorganisms for remediation of contaminated sites. It also reinforces that natural ecological systems are very complex and hard to be controlled, and that our knowledge about the biotechnological potential of microorganisms has much to be developed. In the meanwhile, we discuss the importance of selecting a suitable culture media (carbon source) and the modern tools for studying the biodiversity of the samples and the chemical potential of the isolates