Synergistic and Antagonistic Effects of Microbial Co-culture on Bioremediation of Polluted Environments

Abstract

The release of organic and inorganic pollutants into the soil, groundwater, and surface water has become one of the major worldwide concerns. The remediation of contaminated ecosystems could be carried out by different methods, such as physicochemical and biological approaches. Bioremediation has been receiving increasing attention from researchers because of its relatively low cost, simplicity, environmental friendliness, and ability to convert contaminants to harmless end products. However, this technology currently confronts many challenges for the bioremediation of recalcitrant compounds. Multi-species microbial consortia have enormous potential for degradation of hazardous environmental pollutants such as petroleum hydrocarbons. Until now, different microbial consortia including bacterial, fungal, fungal–bacterial, and yeast–bacterial, depending on the contaminants structure and microorganisms capability, have been applied. Performance of co-cultures is strongly influenced by environmental factors such as pH, temperature, and moisture that need to be given careful consideration. There are some studies about bioremediation of pollutants using mixed culture of microorganisms, but few of them focus on microbial interactions and influencing factors for effective biodegradation. Therefore, great attention needs to be placed on investigation of factors affecting co-culture performance. Therefore, in this chapter, synergistic and antagonistic effects of microbial co-culture on bioremediation of polluted environments have been studied.