Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are liable to accumulate in human body as well as animal body owing to its characteristics, such as higher persistence, lipophilicity, environmental stability, poor degradability, biomagnification and so on. And BFRs could be concentrated via food chain to poison organisms in high trophic level, eventually endanger human health. The degradation of BFRs in nature has been noticed at abroad. Recent studies indicated that various BFRs could be photolyzed or biodegraded under certain conditions, and dominant microorganisms isolated from the polluted local environment could remove BFRs in environment effectively.
TBBPA is one kind of typical BFRs. The biodegradation of TBBPA has therefore become a focus of hot research. Moreover, Ochrobactrum sp. is a new genus established by Holmes et al. in 1988. The characteristics of this strain are as follows: it is an obligate aerobe; the Gram-reaction is negative while the oxidase and catalase reactions are positive; and it can't hydrolyze gelatin. The strain has the ability of utilizing different kinds of amino acid, organic acid or carbohydrate as carbon sources. An Ochrobactrum sp. capable of degrading TBBPA has not been isolated up to date.