Structure-biodegradability study and computer-automated prediction of aerobic biodegradation of chemicals

It is shown that a combination of two programs, MultiCASE and META, can help assess the biodegradability of industrial organic materials in the ecosystem. MultiCASE is an artificial intelligence computer program that had been trained to identify molecular substructures believed to cause or inhibit biodegradation and META is an expert system trained to predict the aerobic biodegradation products of organic molecules. These two programs can be used to help evaluate the fate of disposed chemicals by estimating their biodegradability and the nature of their biodegradation products under conditions that may model the environment.