Bioremediation: Engineering bacteria to fix our problems
Our global environment has been suffering from the impact of development since the rise of industry and global trade. Years of industrial pollution have contaminated vast areas of land with metal pollution, making it infertile and useless for crop growing. This can dramatically impact forest activity, ecosystem services, and reduce the benefits of the land for humans.
This is where bioremediation comes in. Bioremediation involves the use of microorganisms or plants to solve our environmental problems and it’s been used to tackle issues like heavy metal pollution. In the past, plants and bacteria have been able to use pollutants as a source in their metabolic processes, and actually benefit and grow better from this.
Bacteria have proved to be powerful tools in bioremediation. Microorganisms from genera such as Cycloclasticusand Alcanivorax have been found to degrade a variety of hydrocarbons — including straight chain saturated and branched chain saturated as well as aromatic hydrocarbons — by using them as a carbon-source. These pathways have meant that these microorganisms could be utilised to clean up major environmental problems such as oil spills.
This is just one example. There are many more examples of bioremediation, and many more ways we can use existing bacterial species to help solve our environmental problems. Organisms are constantly adapting to new environmental conditions; we can utilise these evolved species to target pollutants and toxins.
This is a key aspect of Team Ripple’s project. We are targeting oestrogen, which is a significant pollutant in waters; with high levels of the molecule causing male fish to develop intersex traits, leading to infertility and therefore decreasing fish populations. Our safe water project will aim to engineer bacteria to degrade oestrogen; to do this, we are also researching naturally existing bacteria already in water that may have evolved to degrade oestrogen naturally; with the aim of optimising these pathways to reduce the levels of this potentially carcinogenic molecule in waters.
By James O’Brien, University of Warwick; iGEM Team Ripple
