On Wednesday, Nasa had announced that the new bacterium not only survives on arsenic but also incorporates the killer element into its genetic material.
The discovery of the arsenic-eating bacterium has been hailed by scientists in Hyderabad, and they hope the problem of ground water and soil pollution by arsenic can be solved in a “natural way.”
“It is possible that the bacterium can bring down arsenic to non-toxic levels. Once the arsenic levels in water and soil are brought down, arsenic can be obtained from the bacterium through bio-accumulation and extraction,” the senior CCMB scientist, Dr S. Shivaji, who also heads the Lacones project, said.
Earlier, a team led by Dr Shivaji had discovered three species of arsenic-tolerant bacteria in West Bengal and had named them Bacillus indicus, B arsenicus and Deinococcus indicus. “We do not know how different the Nasa-discovered bacterium is from the ones we had found in West Bengal. But these bacteria can bring down the arsenic content to less toxic levels,” he said.
Areas around Hyderabad, particularly Patancheru and Bolaram, are highly polluted with arsenic content even going up to 40,000ppb (parts per billion) as against the permissible levels of 50ppb. A study by the Jawaharlal Nehru University on arsenic pollution in industrial pockets of Hyderabad revealed that arsenic present in the soil forms complexes with the organic acids such as fumic acid that help these pollutants migrate faster through the soil and contaminate the aquifers.
“The sources of arsenic are not natural rocks but industrial effluents. Water samples from Peddavagu and Nakkavagu streams have been showing high arsenic concentration of up to 5,000 ppb,” the JNU report said.
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