Empirical Evidence and Mathematical Modelling of Carbamazepine Degradative Kinetics by a Wood‑Rotting Microbial Consortium

Abstract

An experimental evolution system with a wood-rotting microbial consortium (BOS08) has demonstrated the acquisition of a new ability to exploit a previously untapped carbon source, such as the recalcitrant carbamazepine (CBZ). The improved extraction method has provided an accurate CBZ depletion rate from BOS08 of 2.14 ± 0.42 × 10−3 h −1. The consortium did not use cometabolism to process CBZ and the intermediate metabolite produced 10,11-dihydroxycarbamazepine was not pharmacologically active and toxic. The bacteria identification by massive sequencing (Illumina) confirmed the dominance of Proteobacteria Phylum such as genera Cupriavidus sp., Sphingomonas sp., Delftia sp., Acinetobacter sp. and Methylo- bacterium sp. coexisting through all biodegradation process. Based on biological principles, we model the consortium-CBZ kinetics with a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations with logistic growth type terms. The use of experimental data combined with logistic growth models allow us to test new functional features acquired by the consortium