New Frontiers in Bioremediation

Titel:	New Frontiers in Bioremediation
Kategorie:	Diverses
Detail:	Umik Seminar
Datum:	28. Aug. 2012, 16:00 Uhr - 17:00 Uhr
Ort:	Eawag Dübendorf
	BU-G03
Referenten:	Prof Elizabeth Edwards, University of Toronto
Download:	als Kalender-Eintrag

Elizabeth A. Edwards, Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
University of Toronto

Groundwater contamination is a serious threat to global health and prosperity. Chlorinated solvents are widely used as industrial degreasers, dry-cleaning agents and precursors in chemical synthesis, and therefore are common groundwater contaminants. Owing to their toxicity, even small spills render groundwater unsuitable for use, and cleanup is typically a costly and long-term undertaking.

Recently, a fascinating group of subsurface microorganisms, called Dehalococcoides, has been discovered that can dechlorinate the dry-cleaning solvent tetrachloroethene and the common industrial solvent trichloroethene to the benign product ethene. Remarkably, these organisms obtain energy for growth from dechlorination and several successful demonstrations of bioaugmentation, where an aquifer is inoculated with culture, have lead to the development of a commercial market for such dechlorinating cultures.

The hunt is on to further explore nature’s diversity to discover microbes capable of detoxifying a broader range of contaminants. New molecular biology and genomic tools are helping us understand how these microbes make a living, and how we can take advantage of their abilities to clean up the environment.