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Cleaning Up In High Level Radiation with Microbes
geomon writes "Research conducted by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is featured on the DOE's Office of Science web site. PNNL's work with the Deinococcus radiodurans microbe is featured on the Office of Scienceweb site in the article Radiation Resistant 'Superbug' May Be Used in Cleanup of Radioactive Contaminants." I've read about this before - this article does a good job of bringing the latest advances together.
Actually, this has been done before:
Godzilla vs. Biollante, specifically.
In fact, it was actually *interesting* in that film, with one of the best G-suits ever, imho. Heck, there was even some reflection on the consequences of using such a thing. Similarly, for Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), considering the aftermath of the Oxygen Destroyer and Serizawa's fears in Godzilla (1954/1955).
For current aspects of the original legend, see the real thing in its original home.
"thought you'd like to know"
-- "so let us not talk falsely now / the hour is getting late"
You're so right. Also, the doses of radiation that our little deinos will experience are really low in comparison to what they can take. When exposed to 0.1Mrad of ionizing radiation (roughly 100 times the dose that would kill most humans through excessive DNA damage) Deinococcus shows and undetectable level of mutation, and is not even stressed enough to have slowed growth. Deino can survive single hits of around 5 Mrad without mutation. This is about 5000 - 1000 times the amount that would kill most people. This is MUCH higher that what they could contact in the soil definitely, and most of the tanks with radioactivity this high are so concentrated, acidic, saline, or just plain hot (temperature) from the continual reaction induced by said free radicals, that Deino could not survive to do its job anyway.
Of course, mutations are rare. But depending on the life cycle of the bug, it's certainly possible to see a mutation have an undesired affect in a couple thousand generations. Throw in radiation, which is credited as causing gene damage (Hiroshima babies and formation of life theories), and you can certainly have something incredible happen over the course of hundreds of thousands of generations.
-bugg
So these are going to enzymatically reduce radionuclides and metal contaminants in the absence of air ... So what happens when we leave the laboratory environment, and things start getting wacky. This is almost verbatim to the stuff from Stephenson's Zodiac about PCB-killing microbes...
Don't believe everything you see in X-Men, mutations (under normal circumstances) don't happen in living organisms. The bug's offspring may be affected, but it could simply be "programmed" not to reproduce.
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Didn't they try that in Jurassic Park? I bet this supergerm would simply mutate (in a relatively short time frame) like the dinosaurs did and start mating. Then they would grow out of control like a plague of locusts and destroy all civilization.
...ok that's enough of the sarcasm
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
In the event of a nuclear holocaust we would need to develop a widescale heating and food creation system in a very short time, just a guess, but maybe about a year or two.
The dinosaurs didn't survive the cooling of the earth due to atmospheric changes, we might be able to survive it, but with no preperation in advance, I doubt it.
Brian
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
I quote:
>To
> eat oil, say, thus providing a good >way of getting rid of oil slicks? Or to degrade >plastics previously considered
> nonbiodegradable?
Firstly, the way genetic engineering works, you copy proteins, even whole chemical pathways, from existing organisms. For example, you might (conceivably) create photosynthetic bacteria that live in smokestacks (refering to a previous article.) You'd do this by cloning the genes for photosynthesis into something that lives in undersea vents - there are a great many more technical hurdles than that, but it's conceivable.
Now, there is no (known) naturally occuring organism that *efficiently* consumes petrochemicals. That's why there are big deposits of them underground. In order to make a bacteria that efficiently eats petrochemicals, you'd need to generate such a pathway yourself, from scratch. Unless someone comes up with something really clever, which is of course possible, it's not going to happen. The combinatorics of solving this sort of problem by brute force (i.e. making a new protein that chews up (CH3)n at warp speed and generates ATP to boot) are several orders of magnitude greater than the number of fundamental particles in the known universe.
Finally, as other people pointed out, bacteria that eat plastic in an oxygenated environment might not be the best things to have around, eh? It'd depend on exactly how they worked, you could arrange so that they ate plastic relatively slowly, and so that you were 99.9% sure that they wouldn't evolve another factor of 100 in consumption speed once you let them loose, but it'd be another layer of difficulty.
Sam
The article doesn't explain what Deinococcus radiodurans does with the radiation, other than sequester it withing. I have two questions: What about the organisms that feed on or will develop a fondness for the superbug? and what happens when superbug mutates? The bug itself may be hearty, but it's DNA is as susceptible as always. It's heartiness implies a DNA structure that persists despite mutation.
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Simple we'll just genetically engineer them to have cold fusion like you said. You can do anything with genetic engineering, don't you watch tv?
This is a bowel disruptor, and you are just full of shit. - Spider Jerusalem
yep it does.
the magnetic field is able to analyse information collected from ions (charged particles). The information is in the form of a spectrum (range of frequencies) that can be analysed with Fourier transform.
A Fourier transform is an algorithm to analyse spectrums to extract frequencies. It's used to make MP3s :)
AFAIK, different elements have different frequencies that can be extracted from a spectrum created by the device mentioned.
Did I make sense?
Dan P.
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Computerize it
According to the article, the scientists used "unique high magnetic field Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry" to analyze the bacteria. Do these words actually mean something together? Or is it like saying that I put together a "open-source XML cross-platform NUMA per-pixel internet back-end serial port integration ecommerce rasterizer"?
This article is reporting that this organism can be let loose (well, it's already around in small quantities naturally), fed, and after the resulting slime dies off there will be deposits which do not easily dissolve in water.
The purpose of this method is to turn radioactive leaks into bits that don't interact with the environment as easily as raw machined metal does. If there's strong radioactivity one still has to dig up the resulting solids and put them someplace safer until the radioactivity fades. That's weeks, decades, or millenia depending upon the material -- or fire up your nuclear accelerator and transmute them into safer stuff sooner.
These aren't fusion bugs, they are just resistant to high levels of radiation. They can break down compounds into more managable forms or do other useful things. The radioactive waste is still dangerous, though.
-Moondog
What, me worry?
It's worth noting that Dinococcus' DNA repair mechanism exists because life in a dessicated environment (e.g. dry soil) causes breaks in the DNA strand. Because of genetic redundancy mediated through possessing three copies of its genome, Dinococcus can reanneal its genome using intact segments from multiple strands. Thus, Dinococcus has not adapted to conditions of high levels of radiation as its tolerance of radiation might suggest.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
So what they basically created is a microscopic cockroach to clean up the mess after a possible war.
Did you even read the article? They are talking about using this microbe to clean up nuclear facilities where leaks have occured. There isn't even a single mention of war in the entire article.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
The bug is not invincible.
What is being described is not a super-bug. It has vulnerabilities like any other bacteria (you can kill it with antibiotics or Clorox). You could even engineer into it a kill-switch, allowing you to introduce some compound which would cause this bug to die.
In any case, the idea here is to make the nuclear waste immobile and insoluble, keeping it out of our water supplies and from spreading. I don't think any bacteria can actually render radioactive waste non-radioactive. This stuff just makes it easier to handle and contain.
Deinococcus radiodurans two unique qualities are its resistance to dessication and radiation. These properties result from D. radioduran's ability to quickly and faithfully repair its own DNA after severe damage. It is thought that this allows it to survive out in the open with very little water to shield its genetic material. UV, like the ionizing radiation from nuclear waste, tends to chop up an organism's DNA and make life difficult. And in this case, its useful if we want to have a bug that can operate in high-radiation environments.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
People are working on these things even now. I just hope that the proper precautions are taken, as bacteria of this sort can be considered as dangerous nanotechnology a few years to early.
I am not trying to scaremonger though - I think that research in this field should take place, no doubt about it.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
This is true for non-radioactive poisonous metals too, for most metals don't like to stay unoxidated for long. Electron-hungry things in the environment like oxygen, sulphur, chloride and some organic materials will revert them back to their nasty, combined state. Again, you have to get the damn thing away from there ASAP.
No, they've got a neat little microbe that eats lactate, as mentioned in the article. What the microbe does is:
What waste products are left behind?
The radioactive particles are concentrated into a less mobile form which is more easily collected for disposal.
What does it eat once it runs out of radioactive goo?
It doesn't 'eat' the radioactive particles. The lacate it eats is applied to the contaminated area. Then the microbe is released into the area. As the microbe eats the lactate, the radioactive particles (plutonium, uranium, etc) are concentrated into "relatively insoluble and immobile forms".
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.