what do bacteria use perchlorate for?
Microbe's perchlorate-eating ways. Other bacteria that can breathe and eat perchlorates use a two-step process involving specialized enzymes that turn perchlorate into chlorite which has two, rather than four, oxygen atoms and then separate the chlorite into chlorine and oxygen.ince A. fulgidus is an early-Earth organism, the researchers suspect that perchlorate was also around at that time and that the ability to metabolize it was part of an adaptation to all sorts of highly toxic chemicals, many of which are oxidizers.