Cell surface engineering of microorganisms towards adsorption of heavy metals

Abstract

Heavy metal contamination has become a worldwide environmental concern due to its toxicity, non-degradability and food-chain bioaccumulation. Conventional physical and chemical treatment methods for heavy metal removal have disadvantages such as cost-intensiveness, incomplete removal, secondary pollution and the lack of metal specificity. Microbial biomass-based biosorption is one of the approaches gaining increasing attention because it is effective, cheap, and environmental friendly and can work well at low concentrations. To enhance the adsorption properties of microbial cells to heavy metal ions, the cell surface display of various metal-binding proteins/peptides have been performed using a cell surface engineering approach. The surface engineering of Gram-negative bacteria, Gram-positive bacteria and yeast towards the adsorption of heavy metals are reviewed in this article. The problems and future perspectives of this technology are discussed.

• Biosorption
• cell surface display
• heavy metal removal

Acknowledgements

We appreciate Dr Wei-Min Wu, Stanford University, for his comments and suggestions during manuscript preparation, and Priscilla Young for English-language editing.

Declaration of Interest

This research was supported by Shenzhen municipal government under a grant for Key Lab Construction (CXB201111240110A) and a grant with number of JCYJ20130329174424934.