Thank the Microbes for cleaning the BP Oil Spill

Berkeley Lab research study shows that microbes have been degrading the underwater plume created by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at a much greater than predicted rate.

(Credit: Hoi-Ying Holman group)

Humans may have naturally occurring nanotechnology to thank for partially cleaning up the oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that previously undiscovered ocean floor microbes have literally risen to the occasion and begun degrading the giant underwater oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico.

While there was belief that some ocean microbes might aid in the degradation of the oil spill, the process has happened more aggressively than anyone predicted it would, according to a report from environmental biotechnologists at the Berkeley Lab.

One of the giant oil plumes that formed due to the oil spill has been degraded at a much more significant rate than first anticipated. The change is attributed to a previously undiscovered species believed to normally reside at the bottom of deep ocean waters, but catalyzed to multiply by the ocean's pollution.

"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea psychrophilic (cold temperature) gamma-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes," said Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist who is leader of the Ecology Department and Center for Environmental Biotechnology at Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division and the principal investigator with the Energy Biosciences Institute.

The PhyloChip--invented by Gary Andersen, Todd DeSantis, and others at LBNL--made the study possible.

(Credit: U.S. Department of Energy)

"This enrichment of psychrophilic petroleum degraders with their rapid oil biodegradation rates appears to be one of the major mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the deepwater dispersed oil plume that has been observed," Hazen said.

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