Peering apprehensively at the green image in their night-vision goggles, Secret Service agents watched as then President George Bush fed the bacteria. Soon the genetically engineered specimens emitted a faint blue glow in the darkened room at the University of Tennessee, signifying their satisfaction with a light lunch of the hydrocarbon naphthalene.
Five and a half years later Pseudomonas fluorescens is finally going to be freed from the laboratory so it can feast on pollutants in Oak Ridge National Laboratory soil. The event, to take place this fall, will be the first release of organisms genetically engineered to consume toxic chemicals--including naphthalene, anthracene and phenanthrene. The strain was created by Gary S. Sayler, who fused genes for bioluminescence from a marine bacterium to those in P. fluorescens responsible for the degradation of naphthalene. The resulting creature glows when breaking down the hydrocarbon, giving cleanup workers visual confirmation that the chemical is present and that it is being degraded. Those living near potential sites need not invest in darker sunglasses; this photograph, showing the bacteriological equivalent of a feeding frenzy, required an exposure of half an hour.--Glenn Zorpette
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN July 1995 Volume 273 Number 1 Page 29
Scientific American (ISSN 0036-8733), published monthly by Scientific American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017-1111. Copyright 1995 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for one-time personal use, no part of any issue may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise copied for public or private use without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding back issues, reprints or permissions, E-mail SCAinquiry@aol.com.
