Can we privately start deploying microbes to the Gulf oil disaster?

[Large Sarge]

I am just going to say this again, this is the only valid answer I see.

Cheap (less than 1/10 of what dispersants cost)
Easy to deploy (a garden hose)
Non-Toxic (byproducts actually become part of the food chain, and are eaten by other fish/wildlife)

The microbes are alive, reproducing, eating, etc in the presence of oil, so you have a living working army that is growing in number.

So here is my querstion for the board

Can we get this thing coordinated, and even if we start small, can we get people to deploy this stuff?

I mean they are killing the gulf of mexico folks, whether you believe the accident was intentional (flase flag) or not, how they are treating it is criminal (lots of dispersant, booms, and burning)

so I am wondering, can private citizens do something?

we got lots of smart folks on this board.

Imagine we create a website, organize a few youtube videos (explaining the concept, asking for help (money, labor, boat, etc)

all thoughts appreciated.

I am not going to go into the magnitude of this crime, and such.

its very serious IMO

but maybe we can bypass the criminals.

[Heimdhal]

only one way to find out.

[Large Sarge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI&feature=youtube_gdata

[I am me, I am free]

Great minds think alike.

I was thinking the very same thing this afternoon, i.e. a grassroots effort to 'get 'er done'. Start small, nurture it, and watch it grow. Certainly can't hurt to try.

[SLV^GLD]

Wonder how the microbes get along in an environment polluted with Corexit?

[Large Sarge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emltxAPqhdE

[Large Sarge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXrOyqlGe50

[Large Sarge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvsA7tRksVI

[Large Sarge]

ok so far the only limit I have heard is that this only works near the surface of the water.

maybe the microbes cannot survive or be deployed at depth

[Quantum]

Disbursing microbes that eat oil?

Real smart!

When do they stop munching on oil? When the last drop of petroleum on planet Earth is gone?

And if they can mutate and start eating other things similar to petroleum, like plastics? Such as the plastics in cars, boats, electrical equipment...

[SLV^GLD]

You guys have not been keeping up with hydrocarbon reducing/generating microbes, have you?

Here's a quick primer (roughly in order of appearance):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517063708.htm

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917877,00.html

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2005/tc2005033_0514_tc119.htm

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/tons-of-funding/ (nod to BP funding here)

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19128/

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/04/23/biofuel_microbe/

http://news.therecord.com/article/354044


The answer to when they stop eating is when conditions are no longer favorable and/or a competitor either removes the food source or considers the subject bacteria a food source. This can be said of pretty much all bacteria and fungi. Conditions tend to be fairly specific for anything nearing optimal results.
Hell, how long can you keep eating and reproducing and carrying on with life... pretty much until conditions become unfavorable, no?

The product:
http://www.aabaco.com/micron.html

[BabushkaLady]

I think this will have to be grass-roots too, Large Sarge. Has any group started a project that you have found? I'm thinking it would have to be a group near the Gulf for it to take off. I'm not available for hands on help--but I hear ya!

The microbes sorta reminds me of Kudzu being introduced from Japan to the South for erosion control. Turns out to go wild in the perfect climate there. Good intentions, gone bad . . . .

[Quantum]

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1110/


This Week in Science History - The First Genetic Patent

Sarah Castor-Perry

This week in science history, in 1981, saw the issuing of a patent to Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty for a genetically modified Pseudomonas bacterium that would eat up oil spills, the first patent of its kind.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterial culture on an Xylose Lysine Sodium Deoxycholate (XLD) agar plate.This was not the first bacterium to be engineered to do something that would be of use to humans – in 1978, Herbert Boyer engineered an E. coli bacterium that would produce human insulin, revolutionising and hugely improving treatment for diabetes – human insulin being much more effective than pig insulin, which was being used at the time.

So the really important thing about this granting of the patent to Chakrabarty was not the fact that this group had modified an organism that would clean up oil spills, but that it set the precedent for the ability to get a patent for an animal or organism that had been genetically modified.

This was after a lengthy court case in 1980 that went right up to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the opposers to Chakrabarty’s application for the patent argued that according to the United States constitution, living organisms could not be patented. The team defending Chakrabarty argued that the fact that the bacteria were living organisms was irrelevant, as it also states in the constitution that any novel process or technology created by man could be patented, and that this being a new species of bacteria, created by man, fell into this category. The Court ruled in Chakrabarty’s favour.

There are 4 species of oil eating bacteria in the genus Pseudomonas, each using a different component of the oil as a food source, but when added to a sample of oil together, they compete with each other – like any four species would do if all put together with a food source that they all want to eat. This meant that the oil wasn’t cleaned up very efficiently or very quickly.

Oil spillBacteria contain plasmids, rings of DNA that code for the proteins they produce. Differences in this DNA will lead to proteins allow the bacteria to use oil, methane, sugar, sulphur or many other things as food. Chakrabary’s team took the plasmids from the four species of oil-eating bacteria and put them all into a single bacteria. Usually these plasmids would not all cooperate in the same cell, but exposing the cell to ultraviolet light made the plasmids join into one that could use all 4 pathways of the original plasmids to break down several different components of oil.

The bacterium itself has proved useful – whilst not very fast at cleaning up an oil spill, it is still much quicker than using any of the naturally occurring species, and it was used in the clean up of the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, where a massive 40 million litres of oil was released into Prince William Sound in Alaska.

Many other genetically engineered organisms have been patented since then, from bacteria used in mineral extraction up to mice and rats used to study genetic disorders, known as knock-outs. The ability to engineer the genomes of organisms has had huge medical, industrial and environmental benefits, but it still remains controversial, especially in agriculture.



March 2009

[Quantum]

The deliberate introduction of genetically-engineered microbes into the Gulf of Mexico to "remedy" another environmental disaster is absolutely insane.

Even if a non-GMO bacterium could be utilized for oil digestion, introducing such a microbe into the Gulf, a non-native habitat, is a blatant and crazy violation of the Precautionary Principle.

The spew must be stopped, period. Clean-up must be effected via conventional means. And, unfortunately, only decades of time will remedy most of the damage.

[Grand Master Melon]

The deliberate introduction of genetically-engineered microbes into the Gulf of Mexico to "remedy" another environmental disaster is absolutely insane.

Even if a non-GMO bacterium could be utilized for oil digestion, introducing such a microbe into the Gulf, a non-native habitat, is a blatant and crazy violation of the Precautionary Principle.

The spew must be stopped, period. Clean-up must be effected via conventional means. And, unfortunately, only decades of time will remedy most of the damage.
I agree it is a bad idea.

Thank god you're around to decide what is and is not insane. :oo-->

[Large Sarge]

Disbursing microbes that eat oil?

Real smart!

When do they stop munching on oil? When the last drop of petroleum on planet Earth is gone?

And if they can mutate and start eating other things similar to petroleum, like plastics? Such as the plastics in cars, boats, electrical equipment...


the microbes are in the water, they only work apparently near the surface, etc

this is how nature breaks down oil

and oil is abiotic, made deep in the earth, its doubtful we will ever run out.

the microbes cannot live where the oil is made.

the "running out of oil" thing is like the peak oil folks.

there is oil all over the planet, we do not even need to be drilling out there.

but now we have made a HUGE mess, and the fumes/fallout are very serious, so I see the microbes as the only real solution.

Filtering it would take forever, and cost a fortune

Burning it adds to the air pollution

do some limited stuff with tankers siphoning some from the surface


you cannot keep going down the path we are going, its crazy, and its not working.

until they decide to nuke the thing shut, we need a way to keep it under control/contained.

the microbes are the only thing I have seen that seem like they would work (they have worked in the past)

[Large Sarge]

here is one company


http://www.aabaco.com/micron.html

(message below is from another group I belong to)
Ok, I just got off the phone talking to the company which manufactures, and
sells the oil eating microbes. She told me that the microbes will also eat the
dispersant chemicals, as well as the oil. I don't know if this is true, but that
was her answer to my direct question about the dispersants. She also informed me
that one has to be a licensed contractor to apply the microbe product, and that
one could be arrested if caught illegally doing so. She also said she would be
happy to sell me as much as I wanted, with the qualifier that I understood the
risks if I wasn't licensed. The price of the 30 lb bags is about 80 dollars,
with price reductions for bulk buying. The number is 1-800-423-8850.

http://www.aabaco.com/micron.html