Mineralization of TNT

While past TNT biodegradation efforts yielded toxic metabolites through primarily reductive pathways, recent work, e.g. with the fungus P. chrysosporium has given evidence of complete TNT mineralization at typical contaminant site concentrations (e.g. 10 g/kg in soil) although only to ca. 20% over 90 days. Much data also exists showing mineralization potentials of other fungi, e.g. Lentinula edodes and Pleurotus sajor-caju, and aromatic ring breakdown capabilities of bacteria such as Aspergillus ustus and Fusarium oxysporum. The proposed work will use ORACLE 6.0 and ORACLE SQL tools to develop a database incorporating all data on TNT degradation with prediction models. ORACLE is a relational database software operating on an entity relationship model. These data will be collected from many sources. Among the several features given emphasis will be sequential degradation with bacteria known to degrade metabolic intermediates used in a Stage II degradation following a Stage I fungal degradation, use of novel sources of degradative organisms known to cleave aromatic rings, elgl sea microbes, cowdung and certain dumpsite cultures, and new organisms not previously studied. The database will be used to arrive at models for prediction of degradation rates under a variety of scenarios. Effect of variables such as pH, temperature, nutrients and soil type for each case will be quantified if possible, Finally, a set of degradation experiments will be outlined for future work based on the database and survey.