In the current context, with the price of diesel and gasoline through the roof, what was missing was finding a bacteria in car tanks that degrade fuel. But it is the finding made by a research team from the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio).
The study, carried out using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and culturomicshas been published in the magazine npj Biofilms and Microbiomes of the Nature group and, although it may sound like something very negative, deep down it is not so, since this discovery can serve to clean up areas where fuel is spilled.
They discover a bacterium in the tank of cars that degrades fuel
According to the study, fuel spills and leaks at the time of refueling, they are one of the main causes of contamination, both of the soil and of the groundwater, since they filter through the different layers of the surface, and can even reach the oceans, with the consequent impact ecological it can cause.
To combat this contamination, one option is the process of bioremediationwhich consists of using microorganisms that, thanks to their catabolic capabilities, return the environment to its natural consideration. Normally, studies on hydrocarbon pollution are usually carried out in coastal or polluted areas. But what is interesting about I2SysBio is that it has been carried out on vehicle fuel tank caps.
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The study has made it possible to find large microbial communities, such as Pseudomonas, Stenotrophomonas, Staphylococcus, Isopterycola and Bacillus, with a great capacity to degrade fuel and that could be used to carry out the bioremediation process previously described. Some of these bacteria have shown a very high capacity for diesel degradation, such as Isopterycola.
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