The environmental fate of organic pollutants through the global microbial metabolism.

ABSTRACT: The production of new chemicals for industrial or therapeutic applications exceeds our ability to generate experimental data on their biological fate once they are released into the environment. Typically, mixtures of organic pollutants are freed into a variety of sites inhabited by diverse microorganisms, which structure complex multispecies metabolic networks. A machine learning approach has been instrumental to expose a correlation between the frequency of 149 atomic triads (chemotopes) common in organo-chemical compounds and the global capacity of microorganisms to metabolise them. Depending on the type of environmental fate defined, the system can correctly predict the biodegradative outcome for 73-87% of compounds. This system is available to the community as a web server (http://www

SUBMITTER: Gomez MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1911198 | biostudies-literature | 2007

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature