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.
1
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.
2
Non-Sphingomonadaceae bacteria — including Stenotrophomonas, Pseudomonas, and Achromobacter — consistently increased during selective enrichment, suggesting active roles in HCH degradation beyond the canonical pathway.
3
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.
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