Asphalt-munching Bacteria Discovered

University of California researchers find asphalt munching bacteria that lives on natural asphalt and heavy oils only doesn't need water or oxygen.

Vehicles may crowd the asphalt of downtown Los Angeles freeways above ground, but below ground hundreds of newly discovered bacteria thrive by munching on heavy oil and natural asphalt.

Environmental scientists at the University of California have found bacteria trapped in the Rancho le Brea tar pits 28,000 years ago. These bacteria are equipped with special enzymes that break down petroleum, sort of scavengers.

The scientists say that the bacteria can be used to clean up oil spills with their petroleum dismantling enzymes, create new medicines and biofuels and many other applications.

Jong-Shik Kim initiated this study said asphalt is an extreme and a hostile environment for any living organism to survive, yet these bacteria have adapted and survived in heavy oil mixtures containing toxic chemicals, with no water and oxygen deficient environment.

The bacteria survive on petroleum and produce a methane gas waste as bubbles Kim and his colleague Dave Crowley noticed the gas bubbles out of the oily soil and investigated and found this bacteria thriving in that environment..

The two eventually sequenced groups of the tar pit bacteria's DNA to be certain. "Previously, some bacteria had been cultured from the asphalt," Kim said, "but no one had been able to extract DNA from the asphalt to study the entire microbial community."

Kim and Crowley froze the tar with liquid nitrogen and pulverized them into powder. This process exposes the bacteria and then their DNA is extracted.

Crowley said these oil munching bacteria must have originated from microorganisms that were trapped in the asphalt. The other possibility may be they may have originated from underground oil reservoirs.

It is a great finding, hope they are able to replicate this bacteria and use it for oil spill removal and for oil waste disposal. If there are a bacteria or organisms that do the same for nuclear waste disposal, that will solve many of the nuclear energy problems, maybe there is out there.