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Environmental biotechnology can simply be described as "the optimal use of nature, in the form of plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and algae, to produce renewable energy, food and nutrients in a synergistic integrated cycle of profit making processes where the waste of each process becomes the feedstock for another process".
Originally working in cooperation with David Stahl, Rittmann introduced the powerful tools of molecular biology to environmental engineering, helping create the exciting field known today as Environmental Biotechnology, in which the goal is to manage microbial communities so that they provide services to society.
Environmental biotechnology includes various disciplines that play an essential role in reducing environmental waste and providing environmentally safe processes, such as biofiltration and biodegradation. [101] [102] The environment can be affected by biotechnologies, both positively and adversely.
Microbial biodegradation is the use of bioremediation and biotransformation methods to harness the naturally occurring ability of microbial xenobiotic metabolism to degrade, transform or accumulate environmental pollutants, including hydrocarbons (e.g. oil), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heterocyclic compounds (such as pyridine or quinoline ...
[citation needed] For this reason, biological systems engineers are becoming integral parts of many environmental engineering firms, federal agencies, and biotechnology industries. A biological systems engineer will often address the solution to a problem from the perspective of employing living systems to enact change.
Biological engineering is a science-based discipline founded upon the biological sciences in the same way that chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering [7] can be based upon chemistry, electricity and magnetism, and classical mechanics, respectively.
Bioaugmentation is favorable in contaminated soils that have undergone bioremediation, but still pose an environmental risk. This is because microorganisms that were originally in the environment did not accomplish their task during bioremediation when it came to breaking down chemicals in the contaminated soil. The failure of original bacteria ...
Ecophysiology (from Greek οἶκος, oikos, "house(hold)"; φύσις, physis, "nature, origin"; and -λογία, -logia), environmental physiology or physiological ecology is a biological discipline that studies the response of an organism's physiology to environmental conditions.