Bacterial populations present in Hg-rich environments have evolved biological mechanisms to detoxify methylmercury and other organometallic mercury compounds. The most common resistance mechanism relies on the H(+)-assisted cleavage of the Hg-C bond of methylmercury by the organomercurial lyase MerB. Although the initial reaction steps which lead to the loss of methane from methylmercury have a...

Copyright: © 2017 Zhang T, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. *Corresponding author: Wenhui Hu, 3500 N Broad Street, MERB, Room 846, Philadelphia, PA 19140, USA, Tel: 215-707-5164; E-mail: ...

1. General introduction 2. General consideration in choosing target genes for phytoremediation 3. Genetic engineering of metal transporters 3.1. Uptake of Metal from the Soil to the Root 3.2. Translocation from the Root to the Shoot 3.3. Vacuolar Transporters 3.4. Manipulating Metal Distribution: Some Aspects 4. Genetic engineering of metal chelation 4.1. Glutathione 4.2. Phytochelatin 4.3. Met...

An experimental approach based on the assembly of genes of a catabolic pathway was used to detect transconjugants in aquatic communities. Resistance to phenylmercury acetate was established in transconjugants when wide-host-range conjugal plasmids containing merB, the gene encoding organomercurial lyase, were transferred to strains from aquatic communities that had been acclimated to inorganic ...

Bacteria mediate resistance to organomercurial and inorganic mercuric salts by metabolic conversion to nontoxic elemental mercury, Hg(0). The genes responsible for mercury resistance are organized in the mer operon, and such operons are often found in plasmids that also bear drug resistance determinants. We have subcloned three of these mer genes, merR, merB, and merA, and have studied their pr...

1. General introduction 2. General consideration in choosing target genes for phytoremediation 3. Genetic engineering of metal transporters 3.1. Uptake of Metal from the Soil to the Root 3.2. Translocation from the Root to the Shoot 3.3. Vacuolar Transporters 3.4. Manipulating Metal Distribution: Some Aspects 4. Genetic engineering of metal chelation 4.1. Glutathione 4.2. Phytochelatin 4.3. Met...

Most phytoremediation studies utilize merA or merB genes to modify plants via the nuclear or chloroplast genome, expressing organomercurial lyase and/or mercuric ion reductase in the cytoplasm, endoplasmic reticulum or within plastids. Several plant species including Arabidopsis, tobacco, poplar, rice, Eastern cottonwood, peanut, salt marsh grass and Chlorella have been transformed with these g...

Mercury (Hg), especially in organic form, is a highly toxic pollutant affecting plants, animals, and man. In plants, the primary target of Hg damage is the chloroplast; Hg inhibits electron transport and photosynthesis. In the present study, chloroplast genetic engineering is used for the first time to our knowledge to enhance the capacity of plants for phytoremediation. This was achieved by in...