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Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."
Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.
The largest problem with land mines is that there are so many in areas where there is no longer any kind of combat - kids or other civilians go in the fields and lose life and limb. This helps with that. We're talking WW2 era stuff here.
Modern warfare by insurgents is ALREADY past mines, since they don't have an endless amount of money to spend - they already place explosives and use remote detonators when troops come by.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yet *another* source of light pollution.
Also useful in Southeast Asian countries, where cleanup is all but ignored by local government, and the practical cost of disposal is roughly 1 human appendage per mine.
Am I the only one here who is aware of how bad of a problem land mines are to civilians in many third world countries? The response here seems generally negative, but if this technology helps to diffuse old land mine fields, it would be wonderful. Just because it was planted in WW2 doesn't guarantee that it's become inactive or that it won't kill you now.
I hope that as the bacteria glows, it arranges itself into numbers indicating how many mines are nearby. It should making identifying the mined locations a simple matter of elimination.
They don't turn green, they glow green.
Kind of like the goo inside a green chemlight...
In the old days, if you wanted to do the area denial thing, you had to buy these expensive, heavy, hard to install landmines.
Then it was discovered you could scare the other guys away merely by using signs that say "landmine". In fact there is a UN standard / requirement for posting landmine signs around a minefield, scary white triangles, if I recall...
Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart... crack them, drip the liquid in a field, and instant, cheap, area denial... Its also economic warfare, since mine field clearing is very expensive compared to buying a bunch of chemlights. Its also very demoralizing to the troops to know that glowing stuff might or might not be fake.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It looks like the University of Edinburgh entered this project in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, so they have a project page with a lot of information. From what I gather, it would appear that the system is based on a system of enzymes that break down soil nitrites which have been linked to Green Fluorescent Protein. Nitrites are a natural byproduct of the breakdown of nitro-based explosives like TNT and PETN. Of course, soil nitrites from non-leaking landmine sources, like chemical fertilizers would also trigger fluorescence, so the team engineered a non-natural gene promoter protein. The genes to produce the fluorescent complex only get transcribed and translated into protein if the promoter is active. The activator for that promoter is a molecule of TNT, so the bacteria will only glow if TNT is present.
I'd also encourage people to take a look at the other iGEM projects. Lots of interesting reading.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Afghanistan comes in 4th according to this source. I was a little surprised that Egypt tops that list.
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