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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2007, p. 6930-6938, Vol. 73, No. 21
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01697-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

An Inducible Propane Monooxygenase Is Responsible for N-Nitrosodimethylamine Degradation by Rhodococcus sp. Strain RHA1{triangledown}

Jonathan O. Sharp,1* Christopher M. Sales,1 Justin C. LeBlanc,2 Jie Liu,2 Thomas K. Wood,3 Lindsay D. Eltis,2 William W. Mohn,2 and Lisa Alvarez-Cohen1,4

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-1710,1 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Life Sciences Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z3,2 Departments of Chemical Engineering, Biology, and Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-3122,3 Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 947204

Received 24 July 2007/ Accepted 6 September 2007

Rhodococci are common soil heterotrophs that possess diverse functional enzymatic activities with economic and ecological significance. In this study, the correlation between gene expression and biological removal of the water contaminant N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) is explored. NDMA is a hydrophilic, potent carcinogen that has gained recent notoriety due to its environmental persistence and emergence as a widespread micropollutant in the subsurface environment. In this study, we demonstrate that Rhodococcus sp. strain RHA1 can constitutively degrade NDMA and that activity toward this compound is enhanced by approximately 500-fold after growth on propane. Transcriptomic analysis of RHA1 and reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR assays demonstrate that growth on propane elicits the upregulation of gene clusters associated with (i) the oxidation of propane and (ii) the oxidation of substituted benzenes. Deletion mutagenesis of prmA, the gene encoding the large hydroxylase component of propane monooxygenase, abolished both growth on propane and removal of NDMA. These results demonstrate that propane monooxygenase is responsible for NDMA degradation by RHA1 and explain the enhanced cometabolic degradation of NDMA in the presence of propane.

* Corresponding author. Present address: Department of Architecture, Civil, and Environmental Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, EML CE 1544 Station 6, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Phone: 41 21 693 6396. Fax: 41 21 693 5001. E-mail: jonathan.sharp{at}epfl.ch

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 14 September 2007.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2007, p. 6930-6938, Vol. 73, No. 21
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01697-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

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  • van der Geize, R., de Jong, W., Hessels, G. I., Grommen, A. W. F., Jacobs, A. A. C., Dijkhuizen, L. (2008). A novel method to generate unmarked gene deletions in the intracellular pathogen Rhodococcus equi using 5-fluorocytosine conditional lethality. Nucleic Acids Res 36: e151-e151 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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