Dr. James McEvoy and the Tri-City Toxic Troopers
Click on the photo for access the project site:
Over the past century, manufacturing processes as well as the use of pesticides have resulted in contamination of soils in the Saginaw Bay watershed with numerous aromatic hydrocarbons. Many of these hydrocarbons are very stable and can persist for decades in the environment. Some of these chemicals are furans and dioxins that are suspected or known carcinogens. My research project involves the isolation and characterization of microbes that can degrade one or more of these environmental contaminants. Such locally isolated microbes may be useful in the bioremediation of contaminated sites.
A working hypothesis is that bacteria or fungi exist and can be isolated from the water or the soils along the banks of the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers that can degrade targeted contaminants. We will be utilizing a microbiological technique of plating soil and water samples (directly or following growth enrichment) on a selective minimal growth medium containing the target hydrocarbon as the only source of carbon. Putative hydrocarbon degraders will be purified and tested for their ability to utilize numerous hydrocarbons as a source of carbon. The goal for this summer will be to sample the water and soils of the local rivers and isolate microorganisms that will subsequently be identified (Biologyand 16S rRNA analysis) and characterized for their possible use as native bio-remediation agents.
A second approach that may be initiated this summer is to survey and screen soil and water samples directly for species known to degrade aromatic hydrocarbons. Such species include the fungi Penicillium, Mucor, and Fusarium, and the bacteria Pseudomonas, Sphingomonas, Brevibacterium, and Burkholderia. This would entail using selective enrichment media that are commercially available as well as a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) approach using DNA primers specific for the targeted species. Although not as broadly sweeping or inclusive as the first approach, this second one has a similar goal: to detect and isolate microbesnative to the environment that may have promise in being used in a bio-remediation scheme to enhance natural recovery of contaminated soils in the Saginaw Bay watershed.
Here is a link to the website: