These Superpowered Bacteria Were Made to Tackle Industrial Contamination
Bacteria are nature's cleanup crew. They play a vital role in breaking down a broad range of organic contaminants, from fallen leaves and animal waste to natural sulfur and petroleum seeps. But the dawn of the Industrial Age put this framework in a jar and shook it, creating chaos: Not only are some manufacturing pollutants outside of many strains' normal processing range, but humans are dumping large quantities of contaminants into the natural environment faster than bacteria can deal with them.
In an effort to help the planet bioremediate industrial waste, researchers have generally engineered Vibrio natriegens to tackle several organic pollutants. A Gram-negative marine bacterium, V. natriegens is a salt-tolerant organism with a flexible metabolism that allows it to consume carbon, carbohydrates, alcohols, acids, and more. Its hardiness makes it a desirable target for environmentally focused bacterial genetic engineering—hence a project out of North Carolina State University that gave V. natriegens the ability to break down common plastics last year.
In China, researchers explored which clusters of DNA helped single-celled organisms break down contaminants like benzene (a flammable solvent now known to be a carcinogen) and phenol (a crystalline solid that can cause chemical burns but is used to create nylon, pain relief medications, and cosmetic treatments). They found that, when exposed to molecules that could be consumed, these clusters conveniently triggered the production of multiple enzymes capable of tackling that molecule.
Credit: Witthaya Prasongsin/Moment via Getty Images
The team ordered the DNA behind nine of the contaminant-busting protein clusters. After separating the DNA from its yeast, they inserted each type into a different V. natriegens bacterium, then placed each engineered V. natriegens in a solution with the pollutant they had been designed to bioremediate. Five of the nine edited V. natriegens worked, resulting in bacteria that could break down biphenyl, dibenzofuran, napthalene, phenol, and toluene.
From there, it was time to test the engineered bacteria in real wastewater. The team gathered samples from a chlor–alkali plant and a petroleum refinery. In those samples—and in nearby soil—the bacteria were 95% effective at tackling biphenyl, dibenzofuran, napthalene, and toluene and 80% effective at eliminating phenol. The study appeared May 7 in the journal Nature.
While encouraging, the engineered bacteria are far from resolving industrial pollution on their own. Not only are their "appetites" limited, but they have no way of eating the (slightly less environmentally harmful) byproducts they produce by breaking down the above contaminants. There's also the question of what downstream effects might result from unleashing engineered bacteria on natural ecosystems. As such, these superpowered bacteria might be a win for science, but ending industrial pollution altogether is another story.
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