The biological sulfur cycle: novel opportunities for environmental biotechnology

Although the study of sulfur cycle bacteria was already started around the 1890s by the famous microbiologists Winogradsky and Beijerinck, there are nowadays still many new discoveries to be made about the metabolic properties, phylogenetic position and ecological behaviour of bacteria that play a role in the biological sulfur cycle. The current interest of the scientific community in the biological sulfur cycle is very high, especially because of the many special organisms that have recently been discovered in the deep sea and other environments characterised by extreme conditions (such as high salt, low/high pH or temperature) and also in bioreactor environments. This paper highlights some of these new discoveries and relates them to environmental biotechnology. It is concluded that the micro-organisms from the sulfur cycle offer unique opportunities for sulfur pollution abatement and sulfur recovery.