Estudio de la degradación de esteroides en Novosphingobium tardaugens NBRC 16725 y sus aplicaciones biotecnológicas

Abstract

Steroids are widely distributed in nature, being involved in various biological functions and their chemical structure makes them particularly resistant to microbial degradation. Steroids are relevant because of their involvement in infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, because they are among the most produced drugs by the pharmaceutical industry and because their presence in the natural environment can pose an environmental risk.In recent years, environmental pollution caused by endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) has received great attention, as they are capable of affecting health at a systemic level and their ubiquity poses a global risk. Among these compounds, estrogens, a type of steroid hormones, stand out for their high toxicity at low concentrations and their increasing presence in different ecological niches. Although microbial degradation has been proposed as an effective method to eliminate these compounds, the genetics and biochemistry involved in these processes are not known in detail. Bacteria of the family Sphingomonadaceae, characterized by their ability to metabolize different contaminant compounds, are interesting candidates for studying estrogen degradation; however, the difficulty in producing genetic modifications in the described strains hinders this task...