Toxic Montana Lake's Extremophiles Might Be a Medical Treasure Trove

EagleHasLanded writes "The Berkeley Pit, an abandoned open pit copper mine in Butte, Montana — part of the largest Superfund site in the U.S. — is filled with 40 billion gallons of acidic, metal-contaminated water. For years the water was believed to be too toxic to support life, until Andrea and Donald Stierle, a pair of organic chemists at the University of Montana, discovered that the Pit is a rich source of unusual extremophiles, 'many of which have shown great promise as producers of potential anti-cancer agents and anti-inflammatories.' In the course of their ongoing investigation, the two self-described 'bioprospectors' have also discovered an uncommon yeast, which might play a significant role in cleaning up the site. In the meantime, the Pit has become a tourist attraction in Butte, which charges $2 for the opportunity to take in the view from the Viewing Stand."

Comments

Nature is very very versataile

[onyxruby]

Nature is extremely versatile and life has and will always find a way. Change the environment enough and most of what's out there will die except for a few things that survive, learn to adapt an ultimately thrive. Mass extinction simply means new opportunities for new creatures and the geological record shows this time and time again.

This has been the case from the small mammals that replaced the dinosaurs to the those that learned to thrive in the oxygen that was poisonous to the life that lived before that.

Man is very arrogant, to think that we should be the judge and jury of every species on the planet. We need to remember that we only one of countless other species of this planet and to be good neighbors.

Change is inevitable, it's probably my biggest gripe against people that are vehement about global warming, this idea that nothing should ever change. Just because a bird species used to stop at this place means that it should always stop at this place.

It's as if these people didn't realize that change is the only thing consistent about our planets biological history. From snowball earth to tropics in the arctic our world has never had a 'normal'. We need to learn to balance ourselves against our planets inevitable future of change.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Anonymous Coward]

Change is inevitable, it's probably my biggest gripe against people that are vehement about global warming, this idea that nothing should ever change. Just because a bird species used to stop at this place means that it should always stop at this place.

It's as if these people didn't realize that change is the only thing consistent about our planets biological history. From snowball earth to tropics in the arctic our world has never had a 'normal'. We need to learn to balance ourselves against our planets inevitable future of change.

The problem with global warming isn't so much that it will produce change, but that it will produce change caused by and unfavorable to humans.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[quasius]

People who support dealing with climate change don't seriously think nothing will ever change again. They think that since we now have the ability to effect global climate we should probably be at least trying to do it in a way that isn't terrible for us. Of course the Earth and its life would survive a massive climate shift. But, as a human, I'd rather us go to the stars instead of bombing and polluting ourselves into a regressed society or even extinction.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Anonymous Coward]

Change is inevitable, it's probably my biggest gripe against people that are vehement about global warming, this idea that nothing should ever change. Just because a bird species used to stop at this place means that it should always stop at this place.

You misreading the target of that vehemence to suit a political perspective... They're vehement because, when the bird stops at a new place or runs out of places to stop, that is a signal that things are changing rapidly enough that our own survival may be at stake. Further, we have evidence that suggests our own influence may be a major contributing factor to changes that may or may not be a good thing for us and our neighbors..

We need to be good neighbors? Fine... That's a two way street. Just as we shouldn't stand in the way of change with a judge/jury perspective; we should neither represent a solitary agent of change that could destroy or alter our current ecosystem far outside the bounds of a natural sequence of events. If it's possible or probable that we've already done this, then we owe it to our neighbors to investigate means of stopping and/or reversing these changes. Finally, it's not likely we will ever be a good enough neighbor to set aside our survival instincts to the point that we will ignore evidence that our own survival might be at stake for the sake of *maybe* being the ultimate neighbor and allowing our home to crumble into the sea so a bunch of acid lake extremophiles can evolve into bipeds simply because we needed to pull some metal out of the ground.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Surt]

It's an interesting theory, but how will you know what you don't know? That is, it might be hard to identify, today, what might turn out to be an absolutely vital compound 40 years down the road. Or even one year down the road. And we have to weigh that potential discovery against the potential progress man might make by wiping out some species. Maybe Giraffe tongues cure Ekeeber's syndrome, which turns out to be what tends to kill old people when you take cancer out of the mix. I don't think that should hold us back from wiping out the Giraffes, because, frankly, Giraffes are creepy, and we're better off without them.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry buddy. I'm Canadian - Northern Canadian. Like, Nunavut. I don't think the warming is a good thing, either. Don't speak for people you don't understand.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Anonymus]

If you're fine with waiting at least few hundred thousand years for that kind of diversity to even think about beginning to reappear.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Princeofcups]

It's as if these people didn't realize that change is the only thing consistent about our planets biological history. From snowball earth to tropics in the arctic our world has never had a 'normal'. We need to learn to balance ourselves against our planets inevitable future of change.

Nature can adapt readily to slow change. The dying off of a species to make way for a new one. But history shows that it does not deal well with rapid change. Nature does not have the time it needs to adapt to the changes that we are doing to this planet. Species are dying off at a catastrophic rate. If the eco system collapses, we go with it. Nature is strong and will survive, but we are just a tiny fragile part of the whole. Man has the capability of causing massive destructive change, to the point that we would not survive it.

Re:Nature is very very versataile

[Halo1]

You seem to forget the part where more than half of the US population may want to migrate to Canada. Northern Canada may become more habitable, but many other places will become way less habitable. And it's unlikely to be a zero-sum game, even if you discount the costs of moving billions of people and their infrastructure all over the world from one place to another.

Well you just removed yourself from the discussion of knowing what the hell you are talking about.

Hear, hear...

Re:Not really BP

[Solandri]

"BP-owned toxic lake"
I'll be the last to support our crony commie-capitalist system, but that's pretty far fetched agitprop.
ARCO ran the place until '82, mothballed it, and then BP bought ARCO 18 years later in '00.
Its a "sins of the father afflicting the sons" argument at best. At worst its a "my great-great-great grandfather immigrated here two decades after the civil war ended, therefore I'm liable and should pay restitution to the g-g-g-g-g-g-great grandsons of former slaves.". BP has about as much to do with what happened to this mine, as I do with what happened on plantations in the 1830s.

I'm actually one who does support our crony capitalist system, but you're apologizing too much. One of the tradeoffs of corporate personhood is that since corporations cannot die like a real person (taking their knowledge, skills, and ethics to the grave), their liabilities must be transferred when they're bought and sold. So in this case, BP is in fact liable for the sins of ARCO, and any companies whose liabilities ARCO likewise acquired.

It does bring up an interesting question though. According to TFA, the biologists studying the organisms in the lake patented some of the yeast they found. Shouldn't the patent belong to ARCO/BP, as the progenitor of said yeast? It sounds like a repeat of that spat where some researchers patented some gene derived from a patient's excised cancer tumor, with the patient arguing that the patent rightfully belongs to him since the gene was originally from his body part. "Invention" vs. discovery.

toxic waste is good for you

[decora]

the mining company (and hedge fund and investment banks) PR people are obviously loving this.

nevermind the hundreds of thousands of people over the world who are sickened and injured by toxic waste over the years. nevermind that these shareholders and boards of directors keep billions in profit while dumping this sludge cleanup bill on taxpayers.

no. this stuff "might cure cancer!"

you know what would ACTUALLY cure cancer?

if you stop pouring cancer-causing chemicals into the air and water. we know FOR A FACT that air pollution leads directly to asthma and cancer deaths, and yet every year these money sucking scumfucks push and push and bribe politicians so that they wont have to clean it up, so they can keep their profits and their mansions and their trophy wives and their cocaine habits.

fuck them, and fuck the morons who think this is going to 'cure' social problems.

Uncommon yeast, uncommon beer

[handy_vandal]

... an uncommon yeast, which might play a significant role in cleaning up the site.

Never mind the site cleanup. Let's brew uncommon beer.

Devils Advocate

[SuperKendall]

From a purely economic POV, more valuable compounds like those found from these extremophiles 'many of which have shown great promise as producers of potential anti-cancer agents and anti-inflammatories.' surely has to be a consideration?

Here you just buried your case though. Who created the conditions for these things to thrive after all? Was it people like you who would have let the mining site along until we could perfectly "understand" every jackrabbit and pine tree in the area? Or the miners who probably didn't care about that much whatsoever but have created a garden for a wide variety of potentially amazingly useful organisms?

So from a purely economic point of view it is better to let nature take it's course in all ways possible (including whatever mankind will do) and then study the results to see what might be gained from it.

Just saying'...