USE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS IN THE REMEDIATION OF SOIL AND WATER RESOURCES

摘要

Parallel to population increase in the world, soil and water resources are being polluted rapidly. The importance of environmental biotechnology in pollution management is increasing. Biotechnology has been used for converting harmful substances formed in the ecosystem into decomposible form and for determining control methods. Genetically modified plants or microorganisms play an active role in removing of industrial waste, in decreasing toxicity of some elements, and in eliminating pollution by hydrocarbons and petrol leakage. Petrol and its derivative, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) as a result of industrial development, form big risks on watery and terrestrial ecosystems. PAHs infected to the environment are primarily decomposed by bacteria and fungus. Microor-gansims can metabolize hydrocarbons in limited ratio on their own. Genes which determine the characteristic of being able to decompose hazardous substances in nature, can be inserted into plasmid DNA, transferable from other organisms by transformation or conjugation via recombi-nant DNA technology. For instance, it is known that decomposition characteristic of naphthalene, salisilat, camphor, octane, xylene and toluen is coded on plasmids in bacteria Pseudomonas spp. Transfer of PAH decomposing plasmid or gene fragments to bacteria contributes the formation of new strains for eliminating environment from hydrocarbons in a shorter time.