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Colourful bacteria put the spotlight on pollution

20th September 2008

Bacteria engineered to change colour in response to specific chemical pollutants would be much cheaper, easier, cleaner and safer than chemical detectors

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Cleanup crews may soon have a better way to spot contamination: colourful bacteria.

Pollution from oil spills and the like can linger for many years and chemicals such as naphthalene are rarely visible. So crews have to use other chemicals – sometimes harsh and expensive ones, such as carbon tetrachloride – to pinpoint areas in need of decontamination.

But bacteria engineered to change colour in response to specific chemical pollutants would be much cheaper, easier, cleaner and safer, scientists told a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Dublin last week.

The scientists tested their microbial sensors out on an oil spill in the North Sea. “We found that our sensors worked extremely well – and we also found the residue from numerous other old spills in the area,” says Jan Van der Meer, a microbiology professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Moreover, he says the biosensor bacteria could be adapted for other uses, such as measuring arsenic contamination in rice (a major problem in Bangladesh).

Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail

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