Table 1.
Petroleum hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria and their preferred degradation substrates.
| Petroleum hydrocarbon components | Bacterial species | Main degradation profile | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aliphatics | Dietzia sp. | n- alkanes (C6-C40) | Wang et al., 2011 |
| Pseudomonas sp. | n-alkanes (C14–C30) | Sugiura et al., 1997 | |
| Oleispira antarctica | n-alkanes (C10–C18) | Yakimov et al., 2003 | |
| Rhodococcus ruber | n-alkanes (C13–C17) | Zhukov et al., 2007 | |
| Geobacillus thermodenitrifican | n-alkanes (C15–C36) | Abbasian et al., 2015 | |
| Rhodococcus sp. | Cyclohexane | Lee and Cho, 2008 | |
| Alcanivorax sp. | n-alkanes and branched alkanes | Hara et al., 2003 | |
| Gordonia sihwensis | Branched and normal alkanes | Brown et al., 2016 | |
| Aromatics | Achromobacter xylosoxidans | Mono-/polyaromatics | Ma et al., 2015 |
| Aeribacillus pallidus | Mono-/polyaromatics | Mnif et al., 2014 | |
| Mycobacterium cosmeticum | Monoaromatics | Zhang et al., 2013 | |
| Pseudomonas aeruginosa | Monoaromatics | Mukherjee et al., 2010 | |
| Cycloclasticus | Polyaromatics | Kasai et al., 2002 | |
| Neptunomonas naphthovoran | Polyaromatics | Hedlund et al., 1999 | |
| Bacillus Licheniformis Bacillus Mojavensis | Polyaromatics | Eskandari et al., 2017 | |
| Sphingomonas, Sphingobium and Novosphingobium | Polyaromatics | Ghosal et al., 2016 | |
| Resins and asphaltenes | Pseudomonas sp. | Resins | Venkateswaran et al., 1995 |
| Pseudomonas spp., Bacillus sp. | Asphaltenes | Tavassoli et al., 2012 | |
| Citrobacter sp., Enterobacter sp., Staphylococcus sp., Lysinibacillus sp. Bacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp. | Asphaltenes | Jahromi et al., 2014 | |
Some petroleum hydrocarbon-degrading strains have been studied as model organisms to further reveal the mode of action of bacteria in degrading petroleum hydrocarbons, degradation pathways, molecular mechanisms, etc. Moreover, it has been known for some time that the use of bacteria to degrade petroleum hydrocarbons is not always successful and is affected by many factors, including the toxic effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on bacteria, the bioavailability of petroleum hydrocarbons, environmental constraints, metabolic restriction and long remediation periods (Head et al., 2006; Figure 1).