Biology subjects

Corvini, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Corvini, P..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Micropollutant-driven bacterial adaptation enables resilient pharmaceuticals biodegradation at trace concentrations in biologically treated wastewater.

Pharmaceutical residues are persistent contaminants that resist conventional wastewater treatment and can disrupt ecosystems; however, microorganisms provide a promising biobased solution to transform or mineralize these complex xenobiotics. Whether pollutant-adapted communities maintain their degradative capacity under realistic environmental conditions remains a long-standing debate in environmental biotechnology. Here, microbial consortia enriched in six membrane bioreactors under high pharmaceutical concentration (100 mg/L) retained full biodegradation capacity across a 5000-fold concentration range. After prolonged exposure to six model compounds (atenolol, caffeine, diclofenac, enalapril, ibuprofen, and paracetamol) complete removal occurred for all except diclofenac. Degradation remained efficient even at lower and environmentally relevant concentrations (1 mg/L-20 {micro}g/L) and recovered rapidly upon re-exposure to higher loads (100 mg/L). Metagenomic profiling revealed enrichment of oxygenase-mediated catabolic pathways supporting this resilience. When transferred to a 7 liters bioreactor treating real wastewater, the adapted community removed targeted and untargeted pharmaceuticals, demonstrating robustness, scalability, and strong potential for sustainable micropollutant remediation. Environmental ImplicationPharmaceuticals and their metabolites are environmentally hazardous because these bioactive micropollutants are persistent and continuously discharged via wastewater, thereby endangering both ecosystem and human health. This study shows that pollutant-adapted microbial consortia can address this challenge, retaining strong degradative function across large concentration fluctuations, including environmentally relevant levels. It also demonstrates scalability: the adapted community can be transferred to real-wastewater operation to remove both targeted and additional pharmaceuticals, supporting a bio-based "polishing" step for wastewater treatment plants. Overall, these findings support more sustainable biological mitigation strategies to reduce micropollutant loads.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2025

Compost bacteria as a promising new solution for degradation of diclofenac and related pharmaceuticals for water treatment processes

Diclofenac, a widely used pharmaceutical, poses a significant environmental problem due to its persistence in aquatic systems and resistance to conventional degradation processes. Mesophilic microorganisms, commonly employed in wastewater treatment, often struggle to break down diclofenac, necessitating alternative approaches for its removal. In this study, we investigated thermophilic compost microorganisms and their ability to degrade diclofenac. Compost communities were cultivated for 20 weeks at 50{degrees}C in a membrane bioreactor, with a continuous supply of 2 mg/L diclofenac as the sole carbon source. After two weeks, the microbial community steadily enhanced its ability to remove diclofenac, achieving removal rates up to 60%. The consortium demonstrated flexibility in the degradation of further pollutants, namely sulfamethoxazole, paracetamol, and ciprofloxacin, with changes in their community structure depending on the substrates. In addition, thermophilic isolates Chelatococcus sp. strain D3 and Mycobacterium sp. strain D1 were characterized and demonstrated variation in the first reaction of transforming diclofenac, which is the crucial step in mineralization of this pollutant, resulting in either 4-hydroxy-diclofenac or diclofenac-lactam, respectively. Furthermore, Chelotococcus sp. strain D3 demonstrated the capability to catalyze the biotransformation of diclofenac into 4-hydroxydiclofenac in treated wastewater. Notably, this transformation was effectively carried out even at lower temperatures (25 {degrees}C and 37{degrees}C). These results show that the use of thermophilic consortia can be applied for efficient bioremediation in wastewater treatment plants, specifically for compounds that mesophilic organisms degrade poorly.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2023

Identification of microbial communities and their removal efficiency of multiple pharmaceutical micropollutants combined in Membrane-Bioreactors

Pharmaceuticals are of concern to our planet and health as they can accumulate in the environment. The impact of these biologically active compounds on ecosystems is hard to predict and information on their biodegradation is necessary to establish sound risk assessment. Microbial communities are promising candidates for the biodegradation of pharmaceuticals such as ibuprofen, but little is known yet about their degradation-capacity of multiple micropollutants at higher concentrations (100 mg/L). In this work, microbial communities were cultivated in lab-scale Membrane Bioreactors (MBRs) exposed to increasing concentrations of a mixture of six micropollutants (ibuprofen, diclofenac, enalapril, caffeine, atenolol, paracetamol). Key players of biodegradation were identified using a combinatorial approach of 16S rRNA sequencing and analytics. Microbial community structure changed with increasing pharmaceutical intake (from 1 mg/L to 100 mg/L) and reached a steady-state during incubation for 7 weeks on 100 mg/L. HPLC analysis revealed a fluctuating but significant degradation (30-100%) of five pollutants (caffeine, paracetamol, ibuprofen, atenolol, enalapril) by an established and stable microbial community mainly composed of Achromobacter, Cupriavidus, Pseudomonas and Leucobacter. By using the microbial community from MBR1 as inoculum for further batch culture experiments on single micropollutants (400 mg/L substrate, respectively), different active microbial consortia were obtained for each single micropollutant. Microbial genera potentially responsible for degradation of the respective micropollutant were identified, i.e. Pseudomonas sp. and Sphingobacterium sp. for ibuprofen, caffeine and paracetamol, Sphingomonas sp. for atenolol, and Klebsiella sp. for enalapril. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of cultivating stable microbial communities capable of degrading simultaneously a mixture of highly concentrated pharmaceuticals in lab-scale MBRs and the identification of microbial genera potentially responsible for the degradation of specific pollutants. Graphical abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=123 SRC="FIGDIR/small/536351v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (16K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@14ff045org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@12747d0org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1dbbfd8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@103640_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG

microbiology↗