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To prevent environmental mercury poisoning incidents, an effective technology for treating mercury-polluted environments is urgent. Recently, with advances in biotechnology, bioremediation utilizing microorganisms to remove mercurials from contaminated sites has become one of the most rapidly developing fields of environmental restoration. A number of bioremediation strategies, including biotransformation, biosorption, and bioprecipitation of mercurials, have been developed to treat mercurial-polluted environments and mercury-containing waste. To construct bacteria that are capable of specifically accumulating mercury, we have genetically engineered Escherichia coli to express a mercury transport system and organomercurial lyase enzyme simultaneously, and overexpress polyphosphate, a strong chelator of essential divalent metals. The mercury accumulation system was designed so that overexpressed polyphosphate would serve as a mercury accumulator; the mercury transport system would make the bacterial cell specifically accumulate mercury; and the intracellular accumulation process would allow the bioaccumulation system to be less sensitive to ambient conditions. The applicability of the new engineered bacteria in the environmental remediation of mercurials is evaluated and discussed in this review.

A new whole-cell bacterial sensor for the detection of low concentration of mercury in environment was constructed by gene fusion between a mercury resistance (mer) operon from pMR26 of Pseudomonas strain K-62 and a promoterless luxAB gene from Vibrio harveyi. The luminescence-based biosensor was evaluated for the selectivity and sensitivity of the detection of mercury. Cadmium, lead, chromium and zinc ions did not interfere with the assay even at same concentration compared to Hg2+. Methylmercury, phenylmercury and mercuric sulfide also did not affect the biosensor. These results reveal that the specificity of the construct is restricted to bioavailable Hg2+. The sensitivity of the biosensor was improved by decreasing the cell density in the bioassay in addition to genetically expressing an Hg2+ transport system which was expected to increase the amount of mer operon-inducing mercury in the cytoplasm. In optimized assay conditions, the lowest detectable concentration of Hg2+ was 2 pM with 1 ml sample. This detection limit is enough to detect this compound in many contaminated and some pristine environmental samples.

The inducibility by organomercury of the broad-spectrum mer operon on pMRA17 cloned from Pseudomonas K-62 plasmid pMR26 was assessed in the absence of a functional merB gene. The mer polypeptides encoded by the mer genes on pMRA17 were almost identified in maxicell induced not only by Hg2+ but also by C6H5Hg+ or CH3Hg+. Maxicell with pMRD103, a merB-deletion plasmid constructed from pMRA17, also produced the corresponding mer polypeptides when maxicell was induced by Hg2+, whereas no mer polypeptides were detected in the maxicell induced by C6H5Hg+ or CH3Hg+. These results suggest that merB is needed for induction of the pMRA17 mer operon expression by organomercurials. Next, to test the inducibility of pMRA17 mer operon expression from its own promoter, a promoterless lacZ was fused with the mer operon, where merB was deleted in plasmid pB43merlacZ. Only Hg2+, but not C6H5Hg+ or CH3Hg+, can activate β-galactosidase expression in bacteria with pB43merlacZ. These results not only imply that the pMRA17 MerR is a narrow-spectrum regulator that did not recognize organomercury as a direct inducer, but also confirms that merB is required for induction of the pMRA17 mer operon expression by organomercurials.

To investigate the role of aromatic amino acids of MerT protein in phenylmercury transport, two merT variants (pMRTm1P and pMRTm2P) with specific site-directed mutations were constructed and examined their effects on C6H5Hg+-transport. Substitution of Phe-36 and Trp-40 residues located on the periplasmic loop of MerT in turn with Ala and Val, respectively, did not affect the Hg2+-uptake, but caused a significant reduction in the C6H5Hg+-uptake by bacterial cells with intact merT gene. Introduction of specific mutations changing Phe-108, 114, 115 to Ala, and Tyr-110, 116 to Ser in the C-terminal region of the third transmembrane of MerT also caused large reduction in the uptake of C6H5Hg+, but had no effect on the Hg2+-uptake. In addition, both mutations caused a significant reduction in the hypersensitivity to C6H5Hg+, but without affecting the Hg2+-hypersensitive phenotype. Together these results suggest that the aromatic amino acids of MerT protein may play an important role in the transport of C6H5Hg+ across the cell membrane.