Better Bugs For Oil Spills
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Publicado: 11 de abril de 2015
Better Bugs for Oil Spills
Oil-eating bacteria offer new hope for bioremediation.
By Duncan Graham-Rowe on July 31, 2006
Hydrocarbon-eating cells could help clean up oil slicks by converting the alkanes in crude oil into storage polymers, shown here as white spots within the cell. (Credit: Heinrich Lünsdorf, German Research Centre for Biotechnology)
Scientists in Europe have sequenced thegenome for an oil-eating bacterium, a move that could pave the way for faster and more efficient ways to clean up oil spills.
With a complete blueprint for Alcanivorax borkumensis, researchers hope to better understand the specialized physiological mechanisms that enable the bacteria to live almost exclusively on hydrocarbons, says Vitor Martins dos Santos of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research(formerly the German Research Centre for Biotechnology) in Braunschweig, Germany, who co-led the international project. The sequencing of the 2,755-gene organism is described in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The findings could reveal how to optimize the conditions for these bugs and thus enable them to help mop up the hundreds of millions of liters of oil that enter the sea each year, saysMartins dos Santos.
The ability of some bacteria to metabolize oil has been well known for more than a century. But so far efforts to exploit these capabilities for remediation efforts have faltered. “It has been used in the past and was a complete failure,” says Victor de Lorenzo, deputy director of the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid, Spain.
In one example, bacteria were usedexperimentally to try to help clean up the 11 million gallons of crude oil spewed out by the Exxon Valdez after it ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989. But it didn’t make any difference, says de Lorenzo.
The problem was not a lack of bacteria, he says. Indeed, though the oil-eating bacteria are not common in unpolluted environments, they are plentiful where there is oil; A. borkumensis makes up asmuch as 90 percent of microbial populations in oil spills. The challenge in using these bacteria to clean up oil lies in creating the right conditions for them to grow faster and metabolize oil more efficiently. Cleanup workers have started to do this: “Now it is standard practice to add nutrients like oil-soluble forms of nitrogen and phosphorus to oil spills,” says de Lorenzo. However, they stillhave no real understanding of what specific nutrients the bacteria need, says Martins dos Santos.
Los nopales harán competencia a la CFE?
Producir biogás y electricidad a partir de este vegetal es hasta 40% más barato y no contamina; México ya opera dos proyectos que lo perfilan como potencia mundial en bioenergías renovables.
Por: Ernesto Perea |
Sábado, 21 de marzo de 2015 a las 06:00LinkedIn
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En México hay 12,000 hectáreas de plantaciones de nopal. (Foto: Revista Quo/Ernesto Perea)
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ESPECIAL: La ciencia en la economía y los negocios
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNNExpansión) — Energías fósiles, háganse a un lado. En México se gestan los primeros proyectos, y quizá en el mundo, de producción de biogás y electricidad a partir de la biomasa del nopal, para usos industriales o en casa habitación, que promete ser 40% más barata que la que ofrece la Comisión Federal deElectricidad (CFE).
En Calvillo, Aguascalientes, el presidente del Comité Estatal Sistema Producto Nopal del estado, Juan Manuel Castañeda Muñoz, lidera un plan que ya cuenta con 70 hectáreas plantadas donde se cosechan de 100 a 150 toneladas diarias de nopal, que sirven para abastecer los biodigestores y producir un mega de energía eléctrica.
“Podemos abastecer con energía eléctrica 13,000...
Oil-eating bacteria offer new hope for bioremediation.
By Duncan Graham-Rowe on July 31, 2006
Hydrocarbon-eating cells could help clean up oil slicks by converting the alkanes in crude oil into storage polymers, shown here as white spots within the cell. (Credit: Heinrich Lünsdorf, German Research Centre for Biotechnology)
Scientists in Europe have sequenced thegenome for an oil-eating bacterium, a move that could pave the way for faster and more efficient ways to clean up oil spills.
With a complete blueprint for Alcanivorax borkumensis, researchers hope to better understand the specialized physiological mechanisms that enable the bacteria to live almost exclusively on hydrocarbons, says Vitor Martins dos Santos of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research(formerly the German Research Centre for Biotechnology) in Braunschweig, Germany, who co-led the international project. The sequencing of the 2,755-gene organism is described in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The findings could reveal how to optimize the conditions for these bugs and thus enable them to help mop up the hundreds of millions of liters of oil that enter the sea each year, saysMartins dos Santos.
The ability of some bacteria to metabolize oil has been well known for more than a century. But so far efforts to exploit these capabilities for remediation efforts have faltered. “It has been used in the past and was a complete failure,” says Victor de Lorenzo, deputy director of the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid, Spain.
In one example, bacteria were usedexperimentally to try to help clean up the 11 million gallons of crude oil spewed out by the Exxon Valdez after it ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989. But it didn’t make any difference, says de Lorenzo.
The problem was not a lack of bacteria, he says. Indeed, though the oil-eating bacteria are not common in unpolluted environments, they are plentiful where there is oil; A. borkumensis makes up asmuch as 90 percent of microbial populations in oil spills. The challenge in using these bacteria to clean up oil lies in creating the right conditions for them to grow faster and metabolize oil more efficiently. Cleanup workers have started to do this: “Now it is standard practice to add nutrients like oil-soluble forms of nitrogen and phosphorus to oil spills,” says de Lorenzo. However, they stillhave no real understanding of what specific nutrients the bacteria need, says Martins dos Santos.
Los nopales harán competencia a la CFE?
Producir biogás y electricidad a partir de este vegetal es hasta 40% más barato y no contamina; México ya opera dos proyectos que lo perfilan como potencia mundial en bioenergías renovables.
Por: Ernesto Perea |
Sábado, 21 de marzo de 2015 a las 06:00LinkedIn
47
Compartir
29K
Texto
En México hay 12,000 hectáreas de plantaciones de nopal. (Foto: Revista Quo/Ernesto Perea)
Artículos relacionados
6 experimentos para usar bacterias como energía renovable
La dieta que sí te servirá está en la nutrigenómica
Comida procesada y ¿sana? Un emprendedor mexicano la creó
7 cosas que sabes sobre el grafeno y quizá sonerróneas
Otros enlaces
ESPECIAL: La ciencia en la economía y los negocios
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNNExpansión) — Energías fósiles, háganse a un lado. En México se gestan los primeros proyectos, y quizá en el mundo, de producción de biogás y electricidad a partir de la biomasa del nopal, para usos industriales o en casa habitación, que promete ser 40% más barata que la que ofrece la Comisión Federal deElectricidad (CFE).
En Calvillo, Aguascalientes, el presidente del Comité Estatal Sistema Producto Nopal del estado, Juan Manuel Castañeda Muñoz, lidera un plan que ya cuenta con 70 hectáreas plantadas donde se cosechan de 100 a 150 toneladas diarias de nopal, que sirven para abastecer los biodigestores y producir un mega de energía eléctrica.
“Podemos abastecer con energía eléctrica 13,000...
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