Phytoremediation of Mercury in Chloroplast Transgenic Plants

Phytoremediation is protecting the environment in an economical, safe and efficient way and has great advantages for large-scale clean-up of contaminated sites. Lifeasible has successfully developed a variety of reliable and economical solutions for phytoremediation to improve chloroplast engineering in the environment. Our engineers specialize in transgenic phytoremediation solutions for mercury pollution using chloroplast transformation methods.

Introduction

Mercury (Hg) is one of the most toxic pollutants affecting plants, animals and humans. Mercury is normally released in metallic or ionic form, but is methylated in the environment to form a highly toxic organomercury compound. Organic mercury accumulates in the tissues of higher plants and poses a threat to human health. Traditional remediation strategies for mercury-contaminated environments are limited due to their expensiveness and inefficiency. Therefore, facing the challenge of continuous accumulation of mercury in the environment, there is an urgent need to develop an economical and environmentally friendly mercury remediation technology. Plants are popular for their natural resistance to some toxic pollutants and their adaptability to different environments. Plant genetic engineering can be used to integrate new traits in organisms such as bacteria to enhance their repair capabilities and resistance to toxic pollutants.

Fig. 1. A transgenic plant cell for optimal phytoremediation of Hg-contaminated soils. (Liu Z, et al., 2020)

Solutions

Studies have shown that the main target of mercury damage in plants is the chloroplast. Mercury inhibits chloroplast functions, including electron transport, oxygen evolution, Hill reaction, photophosphorylation, chlorophyll fluorescence, and chlorophyll content. The development of mercury phytoremediation technologies based on chloroplasts has received increasing attention. Lifeasible has successfully applied chloroplast transformation technology to engineer the chloroplast genome to provide additional resistance and enhance its ability to detoxify organomercury compounds and metallic mercury.

The bacterial genes merA and merB confer resistance to mercury compounds. Our engineers engineered chloroplast genomes with merA and merB genes to transform them into plants through chloroplast genetic engineering to resist toxic organic mercury. Our goal is to help customers improve the ability of transgenic plants to remediate mercury-contaminated soils, including root uptake of mercury, mercury accumulation, mercury transport to the shoot, and conversion of mercury from toxic mercury to less toxic elemental mercury. The flow of our solution is as follows:

Fig. 2. The flow of solution for phytoremediation of mercury in chloroplast transgenic plants.

Attractive Advantages of Our Solutions

• It has the advantages of less investment, on-site repair, and high economic benefits.
• Since the detoxification and accumulation mechanisms of heavy metals are very complex and involve multiple genes, the desired traits can be improved by genetically manipulating multiple genes.
• The restoration of plant mercury is carried out by protecting the chloroplast, the main part of mercury poisoning in plants.
• Greatly improved the ability of tobacco plants to extract and volatilize high concentrations of mercury.

Lifeasible's goal is to provide customers around the world with fully customized chloroplast engineered solutions for phytoremediation of mercury in chloroplast transgenic plants. Please contact us to discuss further details to ensure your next success.

References

1. Liu Z, Chen B, Wang L, et al. (2020) A review on phytoremediation of mercury contaminated soils[J]. Journal of Hazardous Materials. 400: 123138.
2. Hussein H S, Ruiz O N, Terry N, et al. (2007) Phytoremediation of mercury and organomercurials in chloroplast transgenic plants: enhanced root uptake, translocation to shoots, and volatilization[J]. Environmental science & technology. 41(24): 8439-8446.