Microorganisms as Agents in Climatic and Environmental Challenges

Climate change resulting from global warming, gas emissions, and anthropogenic pollution is the major cause of global environmental challenges. Climate change's unavoidable but disorienting impacts on the earth’s services and inhabitants have been extremely worrying in recent decades. Many chemical, physical, biological, political, and machine-learning solutions are under investigation to resolve the climate change-induced environmental challenges. Among these various approaches to addressing the issues of climate change and the environment, the use of biological, especially microbial agents (bacteria, algae, fungi) showed relatively more benign, resilience-promoting, and conservation promises. Microorganisms can transform and sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, degrade environmental pollutants, and enhance soil resilience to climate-caused stress conditions. Their natural roles inspired their application for bioremediation of contaminated systems in promoting soil health, food yields, organic refuse degradation, ecosystem-resource functionality, and environmental quality. Moreover, they are friendlier to different genetic maneuverability techniques in the search for appropriate degradative genes, enzymes, metabolites, and transducible transcription factors to improve capabilities and target specificity to environmental challenges. Despite these potential benefits of using microbial agents, they are often neglected in global climate actions because their deployment and management require careful monitoring for optimal efficacy. Comprehensive knowledge of the in-situ interaction dynamics of microbial agents with indigenous microbes, the environment, and response to changing climate variables due to human activities is essential for their sustainable use as tools for mitigating climatic and environmental challenges. This study therefore explores the attraction to microorganisms as agents of climate and environmental remediation.