• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.182-195
• /
• 2000

Indigenous bacteria from poplar roots (Populus mnadensis var. eugenei, 'Imperial Carolina') and Southern Californian shrub rhizospheres as well as two tree-colonizing Rhizobium strains (ATCC 10320 and 35645) were genetically engineered to express constitutively and stably toluene o-monooxygenase (TOM) from Burkholderia cepacia G4 by integrating the torn locus into the chromosome. The poplar and Rhizobium recombinants degraded trichloroethylene (TCE) at 0.8-2.1 nmol/min.mg protein (initial TCE concentration, 10u M) and competitive against the unengineered hosts in wheat and barley rhizospheres for one month (colonization at 1-23 $\times$ 10$^{5}$ CFU/cm root). In addition, six of these recombinants colonized poplar roots stably and competitively with populations as high as 79 $\pm$ 12% of all rhizosphere bacteria after 28 days (0.2-31 $\times$ 10$^{5}$ CFU/cm root). Furthermore, five of the most-competitive poplar recombinants (e.g., Pb3-1 and Pb5-1 which were identified as Pseudomonas PsK) retained the ability to express TOM for 29 days as 100 $\pm$ 0% of the recombinants detected in the poplar rhizosphere had constitutive expression of TOM.