Engineered bacteria on a carbon scaffold team up to destroy naphthalene in soil
Bai F, Yang C, Yu Z, Wu Z, Sun M
Phytoremediation
Brownfield lots and old industrial sites near your neighborhood harbor naphthalene and similar coal-tar compounds that block native plant restoration; this bacterial team-up offers a way to clean that soil without digging it up or flooding it with chemicals.
Two types of bacteria were engineered and glued onto a specially made carbon material, then set to work on naphthalene, a stubborn pollutant left behind by coal tar, old pavement sealants, and industrial waste. One bacterium starts breaking the naphthalene apart and passes electrons to the other through the carbon scaffold, like handing off a baton, which lets the second bacterium finish the job. Together they destroyed nearly all of the naphthalene and kept working reliably for a full month, even when conditions changed.
Key Findings
The engineered consortium achieved >98.3% naphthalene removal and 89.5% full mineralization, meaning the compound was broken all the way down rather than just transformed into other pollutants.
Direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) through the S-N-doped biochar scaffold replaced slow diffusion-based metabolite exchange, eliminating the bottleneck that normally limits microbial teamwork.
The immobilized system maintained high degradation efficiency for 30 days across varying environmental conditions, demonstrating practical operational stability.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers engineered two soil bacteria to work as a biological battery, passing electrons between them through a special carbon material to break down naphthalene, a toxic compound found in contaminated soils, with over 98% removal efficiency in 30 days.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Electron‑flow‑driven synergistic mineralization of naphthalene by an S‑N‑doped biochar‑bridged engineered consortium.
Microbial synergy in naphthalene biodegradation is frequently constrained by the inefficiency of diffusion-based metabolite transfer. To address this limitation, we assembled immobilized engineered...
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