Bacterial community structure and metabolic mechanism in petroleum-contaminated ecosystem: a review

Abstract:

Unreasonable treatment and leakage of petrochemical products lead to massive release of petroleum hydrocarbons into the environment. Petroleum pollution has been a global concern. Being cost-efficient and environmentally friendly, bioremediation has been widely used for the removal and degradation of products in petroleum industry. Accumulation evidence has shown that functional microbial communities play an important role in the bioremediation of petroleum-contaminated environment, particularly bacteria. However, the ex-situ and in-situ bioremediation faces the following challenges: ease of functional microflora imbalance and unclear degradation pathway of petroleum hydrocarbons. Thus, this review summarizes the structures, metabolic pathways of petroleum hydrocarbons, and functional genes of bacterial communities in different types of petroleum-contaminated environments and microcosmic bioremediation experimental systems. Moreover, the trends of research on microbial treatment of petroleum pollution are summarized. Thereby, this study is expected to serve as a reference for the formulation and implementation of microbial remediation schemes for petroleum-contaminated sites.