Current status on biochemistry and molecular biology of microbial degradation of nicotine.
Bioremediation is one of the most promising methods to clean up polluted environments using highly efficient potent microbes. Microbes with specific enzymes and biochemical pathways are capable of degrading the tobacco alkaloids including highly toxic heterocyclic compound, nicotine. After the metabolic conversion, these nicotinophilic microbes use nicotine as the sole carbon, nitrogen, and energy source for their growth. Various nicotine degradation pathways such as demethylation pathway in fungi, pyridine pathway in Gram-positive bacteria, pyrrolidine pathway, and variant of pyridine and pyrrolidine pathways in Gram-negative bacteria have been reported. In this review, we discussed the nicotine-degrading pathways of microbes and their enzymes and biotechnological applications of nicotine intermediate metabolites.
Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry 605014, India.
Raman
R
Gurusamy
Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry 605014, India.
Sakthivel
S
Natarajan
D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D001709:Biotechnology; D006801:Humans; D007218:Industrial Microbiology; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D009538:Nicotine / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*
D009538:Nicotine