The Cold War may have ended several years ago, but it left some questions unresolved dangerous: 3000 nuclear waste sites in the United States only. Now researchers may have found a way to fight against this accumulation of waste using a genetically modified microbe resistant to radiation and chemicals down the sites. Experts say that the bug described in the October issue of Nature Biotechnology could possibly help the US government dig out of his 50-year-old toxic waste.
A team led by the pathologist Michael Daly of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and Larry Wackett biochemist at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, enlisted a fairly common bacteria grows in arid environments. Able to withstand higher levels of radiation than any other known microbe Deinococcus radiodurans is as easy to manipulate genetically. So the bug fortified team with four foreign genes that allow it to decompose organic substances.
The high modified microbes easily even in a radioactive chamber, quickly repairing DNA damaged by radiation. And they put their new genes to work, degrading toxic chemicals, such as chlorobenzene, which are commonly found on nuclear waste sites. "There is a potential new way of opening up" for waste disposal, Daly said. He hopes that the body may be further modified so that it uses toxic substances for energy rather than breaking them.
Deinococcus 's ability to withstand radiation makes "bug mind-blowing," says Dan Drell, a biologist with the Department of energy, which administers most sites nuclear waste. But he is not ready to sic the bug on the sites for now. "I want proof that the genome, once modified, is reasonably stable," he said, to prove that he will keep his new powers over time.
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