Biodegradability of Xenobiotic Organic Compounds Depends on their Chemical Structure and Efficiently Controlled, and Productive Biochemical Reaction Mechanisms

Industrial chemicals like halogenated, sulphonated and nitrated aliphatics and aromatics, many of which represent xenobiotics, persist in the biosphere and need to be eliminated from the environment once they have entered as pesticides or other technical end products, industrial effluents, or unintentionally through accidents. Although one can find numerous articles in the literature on the biodegradation of such compounds, there is only little information on the biodegradability of most of the chemical structures synthesized up to now. The establishment of predictive models is an urgent need but this faces fundamental problems. The first will be the definition of biodegradability in terms of transformation and/or mineralization, and the biological processes involved, and the second is the goal one wishes to attain.