Armed with a bacterial enzyme, tobacco can break down toxic explosive that contaminate the reasons many munitions factories, the scientists report in the issue May of Nature Biotechnology . If the plant is successful in field tests, experts say that the variants can be sicced solvents and other organic pollutants.
According to the Agency for the protection of the US Environmental has 22 Superfund Sites laced with explosive waste, such as nitroglycerin or TNT. soil patches it contains enough TNT to explode when exposed to flame or struck by an earthquake. The most common contaminant, TNT is a more insidious threat to humans and wildlife, too: It can cause liver damage and cancer. The current approach for cleanup crews is to dig and incinerate contaminated soil.
therefew years, a team led by biotechnologist Neil Bruce of Cambridge University in the UK has come through the fabric of a technical soft. While sifting through the toxic soil, the researchers encountered a bacterium Enterobacter cloacae , which develops on toxic substances. The team isolated the enzyme responsible and found that it could degrade a variety of explosives, not only TNT.
Because it is difficult to control the bacteria spread on land, the researchers transferred the TNT-cracking enzyme in tobacco plants. Seeds, they found, germinated in a growth medium supplemented with TNT or nitroglycerin, an environment that kills normal seeds. The modified seeds survived by absorbing toxic substances and break down into non-toxic substances. Bruce said this is a breakthrough, like other types of waste cleaning plants "were simply the accumulation of toxic substances."
In the young field of the use of plants to clean up toxic substances, the latest work is "the most revolutionary thing so far," said Brian Hooker, a biochemical engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. The technique to use plants with bacterial enzymes is not limited to the removal of explosives, Hooker notes. "It can be extended to anything for which a track enzymatic degradation is known."
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