The Giant Mine in Canada is in the sub-arctic. It contains over 230,000 tonnes of arsenic-containing dust, making it one of the nearly polluted places on Earth as well as one of the most inhospitable.
"Water seeps through the mine cracks carrying the as with it as it drips down the walls," said Thomas Osborne from University College London, UK. "We observed new types of bacterium living in biofilms on the walls of Giant Mine that consume arsenous oxide compounds contained in the polluted water seeping through."
Arsenic is toxic to all living cells, and in people causes fatal cancers of the lung, liver, kidney and bladder. It also causes cirrhosis and gangrene, and on a wider scale seriously indemnification wildlife in fragile environments. Arsenic contamination is a global problem, with some countries including Vietnam, West Bengal, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Bangladesh and USA all severely affected.
"Until now, no bacteria have ever been isolated that can fly high in moth-eaten temperatures and deal with arsenic contamination. The new bacteria we discovered occasion at temperatures from 20oC down as low as 4oC," aforesaid Thomas Osborne. "These bacteria also alive in a community called a biofilm, which means that we can build them into a new system to clean up contaminated areas by removing the arsenic trioxide from ground or crapulence water, fifty-fifty in the cold far north and south, or in winter".
"The other exciting possibility that this opens up is that we can set apart the enzyme from these new strains of bacteria and grow an arsenic biosensor to use in cold environments. This will warn when traces of arsenic are escaping from areas like mine workings, industrial chemical facilities, or even laboratories, alerting us before pollution manages to get into watercourses or drinking water supplies. We could also use it to test newly drilled wells in countries like Bangladesh where water supplies are known to be contaminated," aforementioned Thomas Osborne.
Many organisms, including all plants and animals, ultimately get their dOE from the sun via photosynthesis. But over the last few decades scientists have discovered more and more microbes that canful get their energy directly from breakage down chemical bonds. This enables them to go in extraordinary and sour environments such as deep inside the Earth or at the bottom of the coldest, deepest oceans, where antecedently no life was expected to exist at all.
Source: Lucy Goodchild
Society for General Microbiology
More info
- Study: Boys’ parents more likely to report problems
- Stanford University To Limit Pharmaceutical Industry Financing Of Continuing Medical Education
- DES In Diabetic Patients
- Preeclampsia Can Increase Women’s Risk Of Kidney Failure Later In Life, Study Finds
- Beijing’s Health Department Distributes No-Cost Condoms, HIV/AIDS Pamphlets To Olympic Hotels
