Abstract
It has been of great concern that halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons cause the disruption in the endocrine system of animals. Among them, the serious toxicity of dioxin-related compounds is becoming more severe especially in Japan. To clean up the polluted environment, biological remediation system using plants, so-called phytoremediation, is expected to solve the environmental pollution problem. The degradation of dioxin-related compounds by white-rot fungi has been extensively studied in the process of lignin degradation. As a result unique extracellular oxidative enzymes, lignin peroxidase (LiP), manganese-dependent peroxidase (MnP) and laccase (Lac) were found to be responsible for degrading a wide variety of organic recalcitrants. Thus, these enzymes are thought to be useful in bioremediation of dioxin-related compounds. In this study the introduction of the genes for lignin-degrading enzymes into the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana was tried using a universal cloning method based on the site-specific recombination system of bacteriophage lambda.
