Molecular techniques used to identify perfluorooctanoic acid degrading microbes and their application in a wastewater treatment reactor/plant

Abstract Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a man-made, fully fluorinated organic compound and has good chemical stability and high surface activity. It is widely used in industrial applications such as surfactants, firefighting foams, polymer additives, semiconductors, microelectronics surface coating agents, aerospace, military, and many other applications. During the manufacturing processes, a substantial amount of PFOA is released into the environment. PFOA persists in the environment for a long time and is not degraded by natural processes and thus causes serious threats to the environment and human/animal health. PFOA is well-known for its carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, mutagenicity, and endocrine disruption activity leading to severe health effects in human. Due to its highly toxic and persistence nature, it has been banned in many countries including the United States, it must be treated adequately for environmental and human health safety. The strategic execution of bioremediation techniques requires the knowledge of microbial metabolism, key enzymes, the genes involved and their nature, dynamics, and composition of microbial communities, that can be easily understood by applying various molecular techniques. Emerging metagenomic approaches including next-generation sequencing technologies can provide reliable information and reveal useful insight into the metagenome of environmental microorganisms that play an important role in the biogeochemical cycles and degradation of environmental pollutants. Thus this chapter presents an overview on the physicochemical characteristics, synthesis, applications, various environmental and health hazards of PFOA, and various PFOA-degrading microbes, as well as the molecular techniques used to study these microorganisms in PFOA-containing wastewater treatment reactor/plant.