Microbial Degradation of Heterocycles- A Review

Abstract

Heterocycles are organic compounds that are well-known and distributed in nature; they can be used in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and chemical industries. Heterocycles composed of sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms are harmful toxins and can cause cancers; these substances can persist for years in the environment. One attractive alternative to expensive physical and chemical methods is microbial degradations, which present high potential and low cost, causing minimal environmental impacts. The use of these microorganisms makes use of heterocyclic substances as substrates, removing them efficiently and safely. Some strains of wild and genetically modified microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) have already been used to degrade various pesticides and aromatic compounds. Understanding the biodegradation mechanism of microorganisms will benefit future bioremediation studies, which may prove to be one of the alternatives to solving environmental problems. This review will focus on the microbial degradation of heterocyclic compounds, taking into account the most used techniques and their limitations in future research

Assessing quadriceps strength in patellofemoral pain patients: A study on the reliability and validity of a low-cost strain-gauge for clinical practice

“…More specifically, there is evidence of a systematic bias in favour of the ID (see Fig 5), confirming that the SG typically measures lower torques than the ID on average. These results correspond with Martins et al [35], who showed that knee extension tested with a belt-stabilised HHD, exhibited similar mean difference in torque production, with bias towards the ID. The HHD also shows, on average, wide LoA values (33.59%, CI 95% [23.91%, 43.26%]) for knee extension in other literature [18], which was echoed by Oranchuk et al [44] who also showed fairly wide LoA for their experimental strain gauge (LoA: 150-200 Nm) during isometric quadriceps testing in a group of healthy participants.…”

“…The SG showed excellent relative and absolute reliability in both the control and PFP groups (ICC>0.90 and TEM <10%) in all instances apart from the uninjured limb of the PFP group. The large ICC values obtained in the present study compared favourably with those from a separate study where belt-stabilisation was used with an HHD (ICC = 0.62 to 0.96) [35] as well as study focusing on the development of a novel affordable strain gauge (ICC = 0.99) [20]. Similarly, the TEM% scores of the present study were substantially better those reported by Martins et al [35] who recorded TEM% of 12% for a belt-stabilised HHD and Chamorro et al [18]…”

“…It should be noted that the reliability of the SG, as with any device, is dependent on the setup and therefore clinicians should be vigilant in following the set-up instructions set out in the procedures section and keep the set-up consistent when doing testing and re-testing in clinical settings, to ensure reliable results. Belt-stabilisation seems to improve reliability in SG-based devices and is recommended for use by practitioners [26,35].…”

Behavior of polypyrrole-coated cotton fabric undergoing biodegradation in compost-enriched soil

“…From a biological point of view, instead, both fungi and bacteria present in soil are efficient in degrading recalcitrant molecules, thanks to the production of enzymes such as mono-and di-oxygenases, dehydrogenases, laccases and hydroxylases, as already reported for N-containing heterocycles [78,[94][95][96][97][98]. In a recent review, studies on bacterial degradation of heterocycles, and in particular carbazole, have been reported, in which the main strains involved were Pseudomonas, Sphingomonas, Ralstonia, Bacillus, Gordonia, Mycobacterium, Nocardioides, Xanthomonas, and Janthinobacterium [99], which can be found in natural environments [100]. Similarly, works on different bacterial strains capable of metabolizing indole (which contain a pyrrole ring) were collected by Arora et al [101].…”