This soil microbe cleans up toxic groundwater pollution
Herzer KR, Torres CI, Krajmalnik-Brown R, Delgado AG
Soil Health
The soil microbiome under your garden beds includes bacteria like this one that quietly filter out heavy metals and industrial chemicals before they ever reach your well water or vegetable roots.
There's a tiny bacterium living in soil and groundwater that eats simple organic acids and, in the process, breaks down some seriously nasty pollution: chlorinated industrial solvents, uranium, and excess nitrate. Scientists have known about it for years but say it's been underappreciated as a cleanup tool. It even makes vitamin B12 and shares it with other bacteria that need it to detoxify contaminated sites, a kind of underground teamwork that helps restore polluted land and water.
Key Findings
Trichlorobacter lovleyi (formerly Geobacter lovleyi) can reduce chlorinated solvents, heavy metals like uranium, and nitrate to less harmful forms using acetate as an energy source.
The bacterium produces vitamin B12 (cobalamin) and shares it with other organohalide-respiring bacteria that cannot make their own, supporting a syntrophic cleanup partnership.
Researchers say the species' role in bioremediation and bioelectrochemical systems has been largely overlooked and urge closer monitoring during dechlorination and contaminated-site cleanup efforts.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists reviewed a soil bacterium called Trichlorobacter lovleyi that can break down toxic chemicals like chlorinated solvents, remove uranium, and clean up excess nitrate in contaminated groundwater and soil, but say its full cleanup potential has been overlooked by researchers.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Environmental considerations and bioremediation applications of the metal-, nitrate-, and organohalide-respiring bacterium Trichlorobacter lovleyi (formerly Geobacter lovleyi).
Trichlorobacter lovleyi (formerly Geobacter lovleyi) is a gram-negative bacterium that can couple the oxidation of acetate or other small organic acids with the reduction of soluble and insoluble e...
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