A dual, dual purpose approach

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 63 KB
• Volume: 98
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-3592
• DOI: 10.1002/bit.21583

✦ Synopsis

Efficient heavy metal remediation from soil remains a particular challenge because of the associated high cost and low efficacy of current methods. Biological treatment for soil washing presents a promising alternative, that is, low cost and environmental friendly. In this article, Chen and coworkers developed a soil-washing technology based on biodegradable elastin-like proteins (ELPs). Previous work by the authors showed that ELPs, genetically appended with a polyhistidine tag (HIS), could be used as an effective extractant for cadmium. In addition, the temperatureresponsive phase transition property of ELPs could be utilized to provide easy separation of bound metals from soil particles. In this report, the authors demonstrated the flexibility of this technology by improving the metal-binding moiety to synthetic phytochelatin (EC). The enhanced binding affinity, selectivity, and capacity enable this newly generated ELP biopolymer to remove cadmium not only from the easily exchangeable fraction but also from the tightly bound oxidizable fraction.