Kudos to these guys and gals. We need to develop better oil-spill cleaning technology, and harnessing Mother Nature would create a solution gentler on the environment than current means of cleanup.
In our fossil-fuel age, oil spills remain a major problem. From the Exxon Valdez to the recent Prestige disaster in Spain, several million tons of oil soils the world’s seas every year, causing ecological catastrophe. Scientists developing cleanup strategies have looked to the microbes that thrive in the wake of such spills as one solution. Now, thanks to a detailed breakdown of one of the most effective of these oil-eaters, they are closer to having biologically based remedies for such environmental disasters.
Alcanivorax borkumensis is a rod-shaped bacteria that relies on oil to provide it with energy. Relatively rare in unpolluted seas it quickly comes to dominate the marine microbial ecosystem after an oil spill, and it can be found throughout the world’s oceans. Vítor A. P. Martins dos Santos of the German Research Center for Biotechnology and his colleagues broke the marine organism’s genome into more than 3 million base pairs and then pieced them together into a complete genetic map.
We’ve been researching the use of bacteria for applications from this to power generation. Why not use nature whenever possible?
definately, we should use nature whenever possible, but what will eat all of that bacteria?
The bacteria run out of food and die, then get eaten by other bacteria.
When they’re full of oil, they should be compressed into small cakes and rammed down the gullet of oil company executives.
Sounds like a great idea. But I will confess I get certain feelings after having seen so many science fiction movies and books. If it is benign and works, then there should be caches of these bacteria around the world, including right here in America, ready to go to work on any oil spill.
Will these bacteria work on refined products, such as diesel fuel? It only takes a small amount of dumped or spilled oil to ruin a fresh water supply.
I wouldn’t put it past the oil companies to embrace this biotechnology, only to turn it into a money making venture.
“Yes, we spilled some oil, but we’ll gladly clean it all up… for a price.”
And when the bacteria mutate and spread to eat all of the oil?
This only works on Crude oils.
I tried to find a location with a FULL listing of all the oil spills. Took along time, but couldnt find a REAL site that had ALL the spills.
I know there was a big one in Venisula, and peru, as well as ALL OVER the middle east, and Golf of Mexico.
I DID find that the most poluted section streatches accross the feeding grounds accross the pacific Trade route, which is from S. Cali, to Indian Ocean. this is the Main route they come to the US and would be a VERY bad area to have ANY spills as it would affect the fish feeding grounds, including Whales.
“Only” on crude oil? Most tanker spills are of crude.
You never fully understand a genome. It’s the result of hundreds of million years of evolution. You always run the risk of turning proteins on or off by accident. There should be many years of testing before an organism is turned loose in the wild. Future mutations of altered genes is even more precarious. Too many altered organisms has accidently leaked into the wild, especially altered crop plants.
Kudos to these guys and gals. We need to develop better oil-spill cleaning technology, and harnessing Mother Nature would create a solution gentler on the environment than current means of cleanup.
Just remember “The Law of Unintended Consequences” before you get too giddy. I’m all for bio-tech, but let’s not introduce yet another organism where it’s never been before and doing something it never did before on top of that.
So far we’ve had enough disasters (bt cotton/corn, golden rice, roundup resistant grains, etc etc) launched to keep us busy for a while solving those.
Didn’t the Israelis’ already worked on these bacteria? As far as I know they managed to make ’em grow in tanks and take the oil dissolving enzymes.
#8, Alix, And that is too bad. I was thinking along the lines of a truck accident where diesel fuel leaks into a stream or lake. Usually by the time the hazardous spill team arrives, the fuel has already seeped past any containment. Then, even when there is containment, it is seldom totally effective. A treatment could go a long way to get what the clean up misses.
So while these bacteria may be very useful for large crude oil spills, something similar for small refined oil spills would really help.
Then again, once one strain is developed, they may be able to create variants.
Even so, there’s a lot of damage done by crude oil spills.