Xref: utzoo sci.bio:2321 sci.bio.technology:5 sci.environment:2698 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay From: jay@banzai.PCC.COM (Jay Schuster) Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.bio.technology,sci.environment Subject: Re: Oil-Eating Bacteria Summary: You can pump oxygen into the ground Message-ID: <1989Sep18.215047.2482@banzai.PCC.COM> Date: 18 Sep 89 21:50:47 GMT References: <1989Sep17.193703.6598@cs.rochester.edu> <26170@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Organization: The People's Computer Company, Williston, VT Lines: 23 chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio) writes: >In article <1989Sep17.193703.6598@cs.rochester.edu> >>Can it survive in the environment of an underground oil deposit? >All of the biological ways of eating oil that I have ever heard of >involve oxidizing it with oxygen (biological ways of oxidizing it using >sulfate or nitrate are conceivable, but I haven't heard of any). An old housemate of mine specializes in biological degradation of toxic wastes. She says that what they do when they find ground contamination is culture the soil to find the bacteria that thrive on the gunk, and then find the conditions that make them thrive best. Then they inject the soil with this bacteria (that was already there, they are just increasing the population) and inject in whatever else the bacteria need (water, air, extra nutrients). Sounded pretty nifty to me. She also said that they don't have stock libraries of bacteria that eat particular toxins, because bacteria are so incredibly abundant in the soil that any soil you sample will have *something* in it. -- Jay Schuster uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'