Bioremediation is the use of prokaryotes, fungi, or plants to remove pollutants from the environment. This process has been used to remove harmful toxins in groundwater as a byproduct of agricultural run-off and also to clean up oil spills.
Bioremediation is a useful process in which microbes and bacteria are used to remove toxins and pollutants from the environment. In agricultural practices, the use of fertilizers and pesticides can result in leaching of chemicals into the groundwater, streams and lakes. For example, atrazine—an environmental toxin found in many fertilizers—can be broken down and removed from soils using two common environmental bacterial species, Rhizobium and Tricoderma sp.
Oil spills often contribute to the loss of marine biodiversity. However, nutrient addition to aquatic areas affected by an oil spill promote the growth of hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria that will break down petroleum. For example, in one study, scientists tested the ability of a naturally occurring consortium of bacterial symbionts of the coral Mussismilia hartii, to break down oil. Not only can they degrade petroleum hydrocarbons minimizing effects of oil on the health of the coral species, but they can dually promote photosynthetic efficiency of the coral.
Heavily polluted ecosystems can be detoxified by organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and plants. A process called bioremediation.
For example, after an oil spill, scientists can stimulate the growth of naturally occurring species of pseudomonas bacteria, by adding nutrients to the environment that can be used to break down the petroleum hydrocarbons from the spill.
However, many of these bacteria will degrade the hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide, another major pollutant. But some scientists are now modifying metabolic processes in cyanobacteria to increase glucose production and therefore increase the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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