Bacillus thuringiensis a promising bacterium for degrading emerging pollutants

• A pollutant degrading bacterium was isolated from marine sediment.
• Bacterium shows ability for imidacloprid and phenanthrene removal.
• Plausible degradation pathways of both pollutants were established.
• Bacillus thuringiensis has enormous potential to mineralize phenanthrene and imidacloprid.

In the last decades, a wide range of organic pollutants has been identified as emerging pollutants in the aquatic environment. However, limited work has been done examining the ability of microorganisms to degrade emerging pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pesticides.In this work, a novel PAH and pesticide degrading bacterium was isolated from polluted marine sediment. After morphological and genetic characterization, the novel strain showed the highest similarity to Bacillus thuringiensis. The ability of the isolated bacterium to degrade the target pollutants was evaluated in shake flasks and bioreactor assays, reaching high levels of degradation for the model pollutants studied, phenanthrene and imidacloprid. Furthermore, the plausible degradation pathways of both pollutants were established. Based on the reported results, it can be concluded that B. thuringiensis has an enormous potential to mineralize a wide spectrum of emerging pollutants, such as PAHs and pesticides.