Microbial degradation of estrogens in the environment

Estrogens in the environment are important environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals,and the major way to remove them is through microbial degradation.This paper reviews four aspects of the microbial degradation of estrogens,including the reported estro-gen-degrading bacteria,degradation mechanisms,the estrogen degradation pathway and es-trogen degradation by eukaryotic microorganisms.In the end,future research directions of microbial degradation of estrogens are suggested.