Adaptation and degradation of PFAS by the bacterium Pseudomonas putida

Thesis topic details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

SL-DRF-26-0084  

Direction

DRF

Thesis topic details

Category

Life Sciences

Thesis topics

Adaptation and degradation of PFAS by the bacterium Pseudomonas putida

Contract

Thèse

Job description

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a class of very diverse chemicals found in products of daily use, that are highly persistent and encountered everywhere in the environment. They accumulate/biomagnify within the natural food chain and show a relatively high toxicity including the alternative products developed after the ban of the legacy compounds. Therefore, the world is facing a situation of great concern all the more as the retreatment of contaminated soils, sediments and water is difficult and costly. One of the main challenges is because various PFASs have quite different physicochemical properties but are often encountered in mixture making it difficult to find a technology efficient to remove all of them. We propose to pave the way towards another approach for PFASs elimination, bioremediation that is known to be a good alternative to chemical or physical methods for removing toxics (self-sustainability, cheaper, working in milder conditions, and often with dissolved and sorbed contaminants). A few bacteria have been described to be able to partially modify/degrade some PFASs. However, except the aspect of PFAS transformation, no data are available concerning their adaptation to PFAS exposure. A few projects are focusing on finding enzymes implicated in the degradation per se but if we want to use bacterial cultures and not enzymes, many other parameters need to be taken into account to set up a performant strain and hence a performant process. Therefore, we propose to analyze in depth the response to several PFASs of the PFAS degrading strain Pseudomonas putida ATCC 17514 in term of degradation, adaptation to a potential toxicity and metabolism adjustment. The analyses will mainly rely on a proteomic approach that is a very powerful technique to analyze global responses without a priori, and has never been done to characterize PFASs toxicity or fluorinated compounds metabolism in bacteria. The ultimate goal after this bootstrap project will be to engineer or select a robust and efficient strain capable of biodegrading PFASs.

University / doctoral school

Chimie et Sciences du Vivant (EDCSV)
Université Grenoble Alpes

Thesis topic location

Site

Grenoble

Requester

Person to be contacted by the applicant

LELONG Cecile cecile.lelong@cea.fr
Université Grenoble Alpes
iRTSV/LCBM
17 avenue des Martyrs
CEA Grenoble
0438785872

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

LELONG Cecile cecile.lelong@cea.fr
Université Grenoble Alpes
iRTSV/LCBM
17 avenue des Martyrs
CEA Grenoble
0438785872

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