Applied bacteriology: Use of bacteria in industry

Bacteria have many properties that are useful to industry. The diversity of the Bacterial kingdom is reflected by the diverse applications of bacteria as a cheap labor force.

Bacteria can be used to mine gold! well, not quite, but the discovery that Thiobacillus ferrooxidans can concentrate gold trapped in rock minerals drew the attention of mining companies, and they are now developing a method of applying these bacteria in the gold mining industry. (Source: Alaska Science Forum). Biomining may be the way of mining in the future, and researchers are now trying to modify the bacteria so that they collect the ores of interest (source: Access Escellence at the national health museum).

Bacteria are used to clean our waste:  be it pollution, compost heaps, or sewage: bacteria can get rid of things. See what our friends can do to improve the environment (a PDF from BBSRC, UK). Microbes that clean sewage (Source unknown). That industrial waste can be cleaned with bacteria has been known for over 30 years (Source: OakRidge Natl. Lab). Bacteria have a taste for mining wastewaters no matter how toxic the contaminants are for animals and humans (source: SFGate.com). Specialized bacteria metabolize these toxic chemicals into non-toxic, or less toxic compounds. Drunk bacteria can clean up mining pollutants (University Tulsa).

Here are more examples of how diverse our use of bacteria is:

• Bacteria can degrade herbicides (USDA ARS). Pesticides can be degraded by bacteria and thus can groundwater that is contaminated be cleaned (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
• How can ammonia, a component of dung and fertilizer, be benificial to plants? Only when nitrifying bacteria (Wikipedia) convert it to nitrite, and others change that to nitrate, which is a component that plants can use directly.
• Bacteria eat oil (Source: Terramerica) and a whole range of organic chemicals, like gasoline, diesel, benzene, toluene, acetone, and even PCB's. Most of these are toxic to humans and higher organisms, can they be degraded into safe compounds by bacteria. This application of bacteria is called  bioremediation (Source: Environmental Inquiry).
• The most spectacular bacteria in use for cleaning up our industrial waste is D. radiodurans, which is the only bacteria so far known that can survive high doses of radioactivity. It can be used to clean up radioactive waste. The radioactivity cannot be destroyed by the bacteria, but they can 'eat' all chemical toxic solvents in which these radioactive wastes are often present, and thus slow down or prevent corrosion.
• Did you know? Bacteria can make plastic! (the College Street Journal).

The content of this page is copyright of the Virtual Museum of Bacteria and was written by Dr. T. M. Wassenaar (curator), with support of the Foundation for Bacteriology.

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Page last modified: 08 Mar 2007

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