Environmental Biotechnology: A Bioremediation Perspective

The term environmental biotechnology has a certain air of modernity when in fact it has a long history of use, if one considers the underlying principles and not the appellation. However, as part of its complex meaning, there is a dynamic new definition and purpose in this discipline with regard to bioremediation. The ability to probe the environment at the molecular level with exquisite methods, to create a new awareness of fundamental biological processes therein, has created an important new paradigm in remediation engineering design and management. Further, biological lines of evidence made extremely robust through the merger of biotechnology and environmental science are poised to be incorporated into the very fabric of site evaluation and disposition at the regulatory level. At the operational level, the field of environmental biotechnology is driven by the "omics," the common suffix for disciplines like genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. An introduction to these elements of the process is followed by a review of how they are being used right now in a commercial framework, with the understanding that the entire process is still in the formative stages of its vast potential. (C) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.