Special Issue: Genetics of Biodegradation and Bioremediation

This special issue belongs to the section "Microbial Genetics and Genomics".Many different biodegradation pathways, both aerobic and anaerobic, have already been characterised, and the phylogenetic relationships among catabolic genes within the different types of pathways have been studied. However, new biodegradation activities and their coding genes are continuously being reported, including those involved in the catabolism of emerging contaminants or those generally regarded as non-biodegradable. Gene regulation is also an important issue for the efficient biodegradation of contaminants. Specific induction by the substrate and over-imposed global regulatory networks adjust the expression of the biodegradation genes to the bacterial physiological needs. New biodegradation pathways can be assembled in a particular strain or in a bacterial consortium by recruiting biodegradation genes from different origins through horizontal gene transfer. The abundance and diversity of biodegradation genes, analysed by either genomic or metagenomic approaches, constitute valuable indicators of the biodegradation potential of a particular environmental niche. This knowledge paves the way to systems metabolic engineering approaches to valorise biowaste for the production of value-added products.This editorial was funded by grants BIO2014–57545-R and SAF2017-85785-R, co-funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and the European Regional Development Fund, to E.S.; and by grants BIO2016-79736-R, CSIC 2019 20E005, and H2020 Grant 760994 from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, CSIC and European Union, to E.D.Peer reviewe