PubMed · 2026-04-30
Scientists found that lindane, a long-banned pesticide that persists in contaminated soils across Europe, can be broken down by a much wider range of soil bacteria than previously believed — not just the one family of microbes scientists had focused on for decades.
Soil samples from all three European contaminated sites (Germany, Italy, Spain) showed effective breakdown of all HCH isomers in lab enrichment cultures, despite having very different bacterial community compositions.
Non-Sphingomonadaceae bacteria — including Stenotrophomonas, Pseudomonas, and Achromobacter — consistently increased during selective enrichment, suggesting active roles in HCH degradation beyond the canonical pathway.
Only the Spanish site harbored the complete canonical lin degradation pathway (restricted to Sphingobium sp.), while German and Italian communities had only partial or single-step modules — yet all achieved efficient contamination depletion.