www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

Scientists at the University of York have played a crucial role in
developing a way of using plants to clean up land contaminated by
explosives, January 2006.

The research, by a team led by Professor Neil Bruce in CNAP (Centre for
Novel Agricultural Products) in the University's Department of Biology, uses
micro-organisms found in soil to turn trees and plants into highly-effective
pollution-busters. The research findings are published in Nature
Biotechnology.

Decades of military activity have resulted in pollution of land and
groundwater by explosives resistant to biological degradation. Large tracts
of land used for military training, particularly in the USA, are
contaminated by RDX, one of the most widely-used explosives, which is both
highly toxic and carcinogenic.

The six-strong CNAP team has isolated a bacterial micro-organism in the soil
in contaminated land that can utilise the explosives as a source of nitrogen
for growth. But, because RDX is so mobile in soil, the bacteria present are
not degrading it quickly enough to stop the contamination of land and ground
water. So the York team has redeployed the enzyme in the bacteria into
plants, giving them the ability to biodegrade the pollutant more
efficiently.

Professor Bruce said: "We have taken that activity from the bacteria and put
it in plants with large amounts of biomass. A tree, for instance, is
effectively a big pump, seeking out water, and if we can redeploy the enzyme
which degrades the explosive making it harmless, it combines the
capabilities of soil bacteria with the high biomass and uptake properties in
plants.

"We are using an enzyme already existing in the soil but putting it into a
more efficient machine to biodegrade the RDX. It is a sustainable, low
maintenance and low cost process which has the potential to clean up large
areas of land in military training ranges or industrial sites."

So far, the research has involved redeploying the enzyme into a model plant
system ? Aradidopsis thaliana ? but in collaboration with researchers at the
University of Washington, the CNAP team are now extending the technique to
robust plants species such as trees, including aspen and poplar, and
perennial grasses. The technique can also be used to modify plants to resist
other organic pollutants.

[www.york.ac.uk]

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