Bioremediation

Bioremediation is the use of organisms to break down and thereby detoxify dangerous chemicals in the environment. Plants and microorganisms are used as bioremediators. The technology can take advantage of a natural metabolic pathway or genetically modify an organism to have a particular toxic "appetite."

On March 24, 1989, an oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez crashed into a reef in the Prince William Sound in Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil that devastated the highly populated ecosystem. Attempts to clean rescued animals and scrub oily rocks were of little help and actually killed some organisms. Bioremediation was more successful. Ten weeks after the spill, researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency applied phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers to 750 oil-soaked sites. The fertilizer stimulated the growth of natural populations of bacteria that metabolize polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are organic toxins that were present in the spilled oil. Over the next few years, ecologists monitored and compared the areas that the bacteria had colonized to areas where they did not grow, and found that the level of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons fell five times faster in the bioremediated areas.

Another environmental disaster being treated with natural bioremediation is the pollution of the Hudson River in New York with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). General Electric Corporation deposited these compounds along a 40-mile stretch of the river between 1947 and 1977. PCBs were used to manufacture hydraulic fluids, capacitors, pigments, transformers, and electrical equipment. PCBs come in 209 different and interconverting forms, and the toxicity of a particular PCB depends upon the number of chlorine atoms it includes. Debate rages over whether it is better to remove and bury the most contaminated sediments, or to allow natural bacteria in the river to detoxify the PCBs.

The bioremediation of the Hudson River is occurring in three stages. First, buried anaerobic bacteria strip off chlorines. In the water column, aerobic bacteria cleave the two organic rings of the PCBs. Finally, other microorganisms degrade the dechlorinated, broken rings into carbon dioxide, water, and chloride. While the process effectively detoxifies the PCBs, it is a long-term process that can take up to two centuries.

For many millions of years, plants have adapted to the presence of various metals in varying amounts in soils. Some metals, such as zinc, nickel, cobalt, and copper, function as nutrients when eaten by humans in small amounts, but are toxic when consumed in excess. Heavy metals that are toxic even in trace amounts include mercury, lead, cadmium, silver, gold and chromium. Human activities such as mining, municipal waste disposal, and manufacturing have increased heavy metal pollution to dangerous levels in some areas. These chemicals cause oxidative damage, which destroys lipids, DNA, and proteins.

Certain plants, called hyperaccumulators, cope with excess heavy metals in the environment by taking them in and sequestering them in vacuoles, which are bubble-like structures in their cells. Sometimes the plant combines a pollutant with another molecule, a process called chelation. Organic acids often serve this role. Citric acid, for example, surrounds and thereby detoxifies cadmium, and malic acid does the same for zinc. A class of polypeptides called phytochelatins can also bind metals and escort them to vacuoles. Yet a third strategy that plants use to control metal accumulation is to employ a class of small, metal-binding proteins called metal-lothioneins. The intentional use of plants that use any of these ways to take heavy metals from soil is termed phytoremediation. It is a form of bioremediation.

Natural phytoremediators can be amazing. Consider Sebertia acuminata, a tree that lives in the tropical rain forest of New Caledonia, near Australia. Up to 20 percent of the tree's dry weight is nickel. If slashed, the bark oozes a bright green. This plant can perhaps be used to clean up nickel-contaminated soil. Soybeans also preferentially take up nickel from soil. Another phytore-mediator is Astragalus, also know as locoweed. It accumulates selenium from soil to counteract toxic effects of phosphorus, which tends to be abundant in selenium-rich soils. Cattle that munch on locoweed stagger about from selenium intoxication. Some plants act as sponges for metals in their environment. For example, plants that grow near gold mines assimilate gold into their tissues, apparently without harm. Prospectors use the gold content of such plants to locate deposits of the precious metal. Plants that grow near highways take up lead from gasoline exhaust. Near nuclear test sites, plants absorb radioactive strontium.

Biotechnology can transfer the ability to manufacture detoxifying proteins from one type of organism to another. One organism that was so modified has earned the distinction of being the first micro-organism to be patented. Called the "oil eater," the microorganism was actually a naturally occurring bacterium that had been given four plasmids that were also naturally occurring (plasmids are rings of DNA that can be transferred from one cell to another). It was the combination of the four transferred plasmids in a single bacterial cell that was novel and therefore patent-worthy. The four plasmids in the oil eater gave the bacterium the ability to degrade four components of crude oil. It was invented by Ananda Chakrabarty at General Electric in 1980.

Today, transgenic technology creates designer bioremediators. A transgenic organism contains a gene from another type of organism in all of its cells. The altered organism then manufactures the protein that the transgene encodes. The technology works because all organisms use the same genetic code. In other words, the same DNA and RNA triplets encode the same amino acids in all species.

Transgenic bioremediation can engineer microbial metabolic reactions into plants whose root cells then produce the needed proteins and distribute them in the soil. For example, transgenic yellow poplar trees can thrive in soil that has been heavily contaminated with mercury if they have been given a bacterial gene that encodes the enzyme called mercuric reductase. This enzyme catalyzes the chemical reaction that converts a highly toxic form of mercury in soil to a less toxic gas. The leaves of the tree then emit the gas to the atmosphere, where it dissipates.

Cleaning up munitions dumps is yet another target of transgenic plants, with some interesting biological participants. In one approach, a bacterial gene that breaks down trinitrotoluene (TNT, the major component of dynamite and land mines) is linked to a jellyfish gene that makes the protein glow green. The bacteria can be spread directly on soil that is thought to contain weapons residues, or the genes can be transferred to various types of plants, whose roots then glow when they are near buried explosives. In the future, plants that have been genetically modified in several ways will be able to detect a variety of pollutants or toxins.

Eubacteria; Transgenic Organisms: Ethical Issues.

Bolin, Frederick. "Leveling Land Mines with Biotechnology." Nature Biotechnology 17 (1999): 732.

Eccles, Harry. Bioremediation. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2001.

Hooker, Brian S., and Rodney S. Skeen. "Transgenic Phytoremediation Blasts onto the Scene." Nature Biotechnology 17 (1999): 428.

Lewis, Ricki. "PCB Dilemma." The Scientist 15 (2001): 1.

This is the complete article, containing 1,232 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).