2. Oil-Eating Superbugs
Some microbes naturally break down petroleum, so several companies are working on oil-munching superbugs, which have been genetically altered to devour a spill more efficiently. (See “Nature Fighting Back Against Gulf Oil Spill.”)
But the plan can’t work—yet, said Terry Hazen, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“A lot of companies are saying they have ‘magic bugs’ that have the ability to degrade all types of oil,” he said. But “a lot of the bacteria are grown in high-nutrient conditions in the lab.”
When the bugs are added to the salty, lower-nutrient environment of the ocean or coastline, “they die immediately,” he said.
Other research is looking at bacteria that already live in ocean conditions but don’t naturally crave crude.
“It’s technically possible that we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage”—a virus that infects bacteria—to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil, Hazen said
Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live, so the superbugs could be killed off after they’d done their jobs.
3 Future Oil-Spill Fighters: Sponges, Superbugs, and Herders
on June 6, 2010
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