Environmental pollution with petroleum toxic products has afflicted various ecosystems, causing devastating damage to natural habitats with serious economic implications. Some crude oil components may serve as growth substrates for microorganisms. A number of bacterial strains reveal metabolic capacities to biotransform various organic compounds. Some of the hydrocarbon degraders are highly biochemically specialized, while the others display a versatile metabolism and can utilize both saturated aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons. The extended catabolic profiles of the latter group have been subjected to systematic and complex studies relatively rarely thus far. Growing evidence shows that numerous bacteria produce broad biochemical activities towards different hydrocarbon types and such an enhanced metabolic potential can be found in many more species than the already well-known oil-degraders. These strains may play an important role in the removal of heterogeneous contamination. They are thus considered to be a promising solution in bioremediation applications. The main purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the current knowledge on aerobic bacteria involved in the mineralization or transformation of both n-alkanes and aromatic hydrocarbons. Variant scientific approaches enabling to evaluate these features on biochemical as well as genetic levels are presented. The distribution of multidegradative capabilities between bacterial taxa is systematically shown and the possibility of simultaneous transformation of complex hydrocarbon mixtures is discussed. Bioinformatic analysis of the currently available genetic data is employed to enable generation of phylogenetic relationships between environmental strain isolates belonging to the phyla Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes. The study proves that the co-occurrence of genes responsible for concomitant metabolic bioconversion reactions of structurally-diverse hydrocarbons is not unique among various systematic groups.

中文翻译：

---

降解正构烷烃和芳香烃的好氧细菌：代谢多样性和灵活性被低估的策略。

石油有毒产品对环境的污染已经困扰着各种生态系统，对自然栖息地造成了毁灭性的破坏，并具有严重的经济影响。一些原油成分可以用作微生物的生长底物。许多细菌菌株显示出生物转化各种有机化合物的代谢能力。一些烃降解剂是高度生化专业化的，而另一些则显示出新陈代谢，并且可以利用饱和的脂族和芳族烃。到目前为止，后一组的分解代谢分布图很少进行系统和复杂的研究。越来越多的证据表明，许多细菌会针对不同的烃类型产生广泛的生化活性，与已知的石油降解剂相比，在更多物种中发现了这种增强的代谢潜能。这些菌株可能在去除异质污染中起重要作用。因此，它们被认为是生物修复应用中有希望的解决方案。本文的主要目的是概述与这两种矿化或转化有关的好氧细菌的最新知识。正构烷烃和芳烃。介绍了能够评估这些特征在生化和遗传水平上的变异科学方法。系统地显示了细菌类群之间的多降解能力分布，并讨论了复杂烃混合物同时转化的可能性。利用当前可用遗传数据的生物信息学分析，可以在属于门系放线菌，变形杆菌和Firmicutes的环境菌株分离株之间建立系统发育关系。这项研究证明，负责结构多样的烃类的伴随代谢生物转化反应的基因的共现在各个系统群体中并不是唯一的。