I Created an Oil Spill in My House

Bacteria are often painted as our adversaries, but when it comes to oil spills, toxic chemicals, and radioactive waste, they could be what save us from ourselves.
#microbes #bacteria #oilspills
You might also like:
How Carbon Capture Works:
• How Does Carbon Captur...
Is There Plastic in My Rain?:
• Why is There Plastic i...
Forever Chemicals:
• Forever Chemicals
How Do We Fight the California Fires?:
• How Do We Fight the Ca...
The Science of How Life Started:
• The Science of How Lif...
Credits:
Executive Producers:
George Zaidan
Hilary Hudson
Producers:
Elaine Seward
Andrew Sobey
Darren Weaver
Writer/Host:
Sam Jones, PhD
Scientific consultants:
Michelle Boucher, PhD
Paige Novak, PhD,
Brianne Raccor, PhD
Gemma Reguera, PhD
Sources:
Deepwater Horizon - BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepw...
Bacteria used to clean at-home oil spill (video demo)
www.grainger.com/product/ULTR...
We still don’t know all of the impacts of the BP oil spill
www.nationalgeographic.com/sc...
Adaptive synthesis of a rough lipopolysaccharide in Geobacter sulfurreducens for metal reduction and detoxification
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
A review in the current developments of genus Dehalococcoides, its consortia and kinetics for bioremediation options of contaminated groundwater
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Degradation of Deepwater Horizon oil buried in a Florida beach influenced by tidal pumping
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Diverse, rare microbial taxa responded to the Deepwater Horizon deep-sea hydrocarbon plume
www.nature.com/articles/ismej...
Computer modeling could help chlorine-hungry bacteria break down toxic waste
news.cornell.edu/stories/2007...
How Microbes Clean Up Our Environmental Messes
www.popularmechanics.com/scie...
Extracellular reduction of uranium via Geobacter conductive pili as a protective cellular mechanism
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21896...
Characterization of mercury bioremediation by transgenic bacteria expressing metallothionein and polyphosphate kinase
bmcbiotechnol.biomedcentral.c...
It looks like microbes can help clean up mining pollution
massivesci.com/articles/micro...
Breathing' bacteria clean up toxic waste: Civil engineering professor Paige Novak and her colleagues rise to the challenge
cse.umn.edu/college/feature-s...
Microbial communities clean toxic waste and generate useful chemicals
biodesign.asu.edu/news/microb...
Deepwater Horizon and the Rise of the Omics
eos.org/features/deepwater-ho...
These bacteria clean up radioactive waste
msutoday.msu.edu/news/2021/ba...
Cleaning Up Electronic Waste (E-Waste)
www.epa.gov/international-coo...
Risk Management for Trichloroethylene (TCE)
www.epa.gov/assessing-and-man...
Meet the Microbes Eating the Gulf Oil Spill [Slide Show]
www.scientificamerican.com/sl...
Radiation-eating bacteria could make nuclear waste safer
www.newscientist.com/article/...
Electrified Bacterial Filaments Remove Uranium from Groundwater
www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
Molecular structure of different petroleum hydrocarbon representatives
www.researchgate.net/figure/M...
Anaerobic Oxidation of Ethane, Propane, and Butane by Marine Microbes: A Mini Review
www.frontiersin.org/articles/...
Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Degrading Bacteria for the Remediation of Oil Pollution Under Aerobic Conditions: A Perspective Analysis
www.frontiersin.org/articles/...

[@ACSReactions]

Did you know that researchers are engineering bacteria to clean up electronic waste too? Check it out: theconversation.com/were-using-microbes-to-clean-up-toxic-electronic-waste-heres-how-143654

[@highlander723]

I'm sorry but as a scientist this is very cringe-worthy first of all it's not saltwater second it's not crude oil

[@highlander723]

@Rocky Robinson still though a better demonstration would have been to use salt water and crude oil. All this tells me about these bacteria is unless we have a ship carrying vegetable oil on a freshwater surface crack open....

[@kamrankhalil9881]

you teach the chemistry in interesting ways by choosing the examples of everyday life. Please keep making such interesting videos and explorer the chemical phenomenon occurring in our nature. you do a great job. Thanks

[@forabug594]

Currently doing a chemical ecology project on the oil cleanup by bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico! Glad to see you bringing this topic to the public and doing a fantastic job communicating about it! I’m curious, what bacteria did you buy? They could have also been producing emulsifiers to break up the oil into smaller droplets. Edit: Read the link in your description about the powdered microbe product you used. Turns out it’s a classified mix or consortium of not just bacteria but archaea too! Pretty neat!

[@andrewfreiji4647]

I am curious about the Gulf oil spill. How much oil did the bacteria consume, especially over the last 13 years, and how much oil is still in the environment

[@jugzster]

You make chemistry highly interesting, thanks!

[@rohitreddy38]

What a cool way to learn chemistry❤️❤️ clarity .

[@drishtantsen3724]

Wow! Missed the videos... Great one. This microbe idea has been around for years now....why isn't the government using these methods in a test pool or something?

[@MrXdeDEdex]

Bacteria that has evolved to obtain energy from Uranium is crazy. I'd be interested to see that process in action along with the actual equations that make it possible.

[@floresarts]

I remember that bioremediation was seen as a promising response to oil spills at least as far back as 1989 for land-based cleanup (Exxon Valdez spill) and in open water conditions in 1990 (Mega Borg tanker spill in Texas). TBH I'm discouraged that after at least 30 years, microbial cleanup has never been adopted (or further tested?) by governments as part of an oil spill cleanup plan.

[@Ice_Karma]

2:27 I *_love_* how the bottle of archaea looks like a spice bottle!

[@user-bp8yg3ko1r]

Great video, very interesting experiment!

[@Noneblue39]

Cool topic !

[@Alpacabowl98]

I love hearing bacteria do good things😂

[@Hanshuber161]

Hi Samantha. I love watching the video you make as you have a knack for making whatever you share with us fun to learn! I have two questions: how does the harmful and ionizing gamma radiations from the radioactive Uranium not kill the bacteria to begin with? Also when it comes to oil spills, is there any other way in which they could be cleaned without releasing a bunch of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Thanks for the awesome video.

[@ACSReactions]

Great questions! The uranium pulled from the environment by bacteria is usually in a very stable form, plus it’s trapped in a vesicle so it’s not coming in contact with other things in the bacterial cell that it might damage. As for cleaning up waste without releasing CO2, that’s tricky but some scientists are actually working on engineering bacteria that can specifically clean up CO2: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03679-x

[@thomgt4]

We'd rather move the problem to the point that it's CO2, that's a lot easier to deal with compared to a liquid oil mess in the ocean

[@jeffhochheimer7135]

Left-over bacteria? Be careful not to put that shaker in the same cabinet as the spices. That might make for an interesting dinner...

[@eaterdrinker000]

Dr. Jones should shake some of the bacteria and some nutritional yeast in a fish tank and see who wins.

[@nahdahayatillah39]

what is the name of the bacterial product in the bottle?

[@sarahu.38]

7:01 Did you stir the one without the bacteria? You vigorously stirred the one with bacteria, which could have broken up the oil, so I'm wondering if you did the same to the other container?

[@sebastienguenette7903]

Have you heard of Mycofiltration for soft water? and if so is it any good?

[@Pwn3dbyth3n00b]

What happens when these microbes become the norm because they get heavily selected for. For example bacteria/fungi that is able to break down plastic in landfills. What happens when they start breaking down plastic in the grocery store, in machinery, etc.

[@Candesce]

I was just thinking similarly except it would be interesting if there was a bacteria that could contaminate and spoil petrol.

[@eaterdrinker000]

I'm not an epidemiologist, but I think it might be relatively easy to keep most things uncontaminated by keeping them clean, dry, and away from the bacterial dispersal agent.

[@sethapex9670]

how are these uranium absorbing lipid polysacarides produced? could we engineer algae with them?

[@datastorm75]

Another tool for our toolchest.

[@seanc6128]

Uh bacteria consuming oil and producing CO2 is kind of like saying that setting the oil on fire is "cleaning it up".

[@rfldss89]

No, because setting it on fire would produce a lot of byproducts of combustion, like soot and carbon monoxide. Cellular respiration relies on enzymes to catalyse the reactions, so its much more specific regarding what compounds come out of it. Yes it still produces co2 which isn't ideal but a lot of the carbon also gets sequestered in the cells, in the form of lipids and sugars and proteins, as the bacteria grow and multiply. Obviously the best way to treat an oil spill is to not pump out the oil the first place, but as long as we're gonna do that, we're gonna need ways to resolve the environmental disasters caused by the oil industry.

[@lilycha9398]

Those are two really different things you know.

[@seanc6128]

@@frenne_dilley no

[@seanc6128]

@@rfldss89 no

[@AdityaMehendale]

"Pretty solid experiment" would not be my choice of words. What about you, Dr. Jones?

[@matthewbaynham6286]

I'm a very skeptical type of person. This video seems to have the solution for major disasters to just clean up themselves. I can just feel that skepticism just coming out of me. This is just too easy.

[@highlander723]

6:38 Wouldn't be A reactions video without the environmental guilt trip

[@rfldss89]

Guilt tripping... the oil industry? If by now you still disagree with the scientific consensus regarding climate change, I'm not the one who's gonna be able change your mind all of a sudden, but I do hope you will someday. Cheers.