ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the biochemistries employed by micro-organisms to survive metal-contaminated environments. Certainly, it does not exhaustively discuss all known mechanisms but highlights those that are important for practitioners of bioremediation. We first focus on mechanisms that micro-organisms use to immobilize metals either intracellularly or extracellularly. Second, we focus on mechanisms of metal resistance that bacteria use to survive in the presence of toxic metals, but not necessarily remove them or change their speciation. Unfortunately, little data is available regarding the capacity of prokaryotes to survive exposure to multiple metal toxins. The information here provides a bacterial toolkit list that can aid a practitioner of bioremediation in developing an effective remediation strategy.
