Application of Sustainable Microbial Techniques in Biomonitoring for Environmental Sustainability

The growing rates of pollution have been driving global warming, rising sea levels, and species extinction, impacting both developed and developing nations alike. Traditionally, chemical analysis of air, water, and soil was employed to detect pollutants. However, by the time harmful chemicals were identified in these environments, significant damage had already occurred, making remediation efforts challenging. Bioindicators refer to living organisms like plants, animals or microbes which mirror the changes in environment composition due to pollution. Monitoring species or organisms which are very sensitive to such environmental changes constitute biomonitoring. For these techniques such as PCR, microscopy, immunological assays, biosensors, and microfluidics are crucial for environmental sustainability. PCR detects microbial contaminants and assesses biodiversity, while microscopy identifies and monitors microorganisms. Immunological assays like ELISA and EIA detect specific toxins and track environmental changes. Biosensors offer real-time pollutant data, lateral flow assays provide rapid on-site testing, and microfluidics enable efficient, high-throughput analysis. ELFA offers high sensitivity for trace pollutants, and other serological assays help identify pathogens and assess pollution impacts, collectively improving pollution monitoring and ecosystem health. The effect of environmental pollutants reflects in the lower levels before it occurs in higher levels. Lower levels include cellular, molecular and physiological changes that occur as a result of pollution and known as biomarkers, which act as an early warning system for toxic pollutants. Microbial communities present in air, water and soil are one of the early bioindicators used for assessing the pollution levels. Evaluation methods include detecting, tracking and quantifying microbes; monitoring diversity indices of microbial communities and analysing specific metabolic pathways. Biomonitoring techniques include high-throughput sequencing, quantitative Polymerase Chain Technology, metaproteomics, metatranscriptomics and metagenomics. Cultivable microbes are commonly used but cultivation independent methods like pathogen tracking and toxin tracking needs to be included for an accurate picture. Integrating biological methods with technology like bioinformatics and machine learning tools could increase the efficiency of biomonitoring using microbes.