Geobacter's Effectivness in the Removal of Uranium

What if there was a way to clean up radioactive waste spills? To clean it out of waters for safe consumption? For years and years people have seen the ways that bacteria can clean up oil spills and nuclear waste, and where baffled on how they did so. How did something so small, clean up a mess so big? Gemma Reguera and her team at Michigan State have solved the age long question. They have decided that bacteria do so by a hair like pili. The pili acts much like a conductive wire, by transferring electrons. Geobacter Sulfurreduncen is one of the many bacteria that do so. The energy conducted by the pili, in turn powers the bacteria. Geobacter, for short, is able to both isolate and, in a sense, kill off uranium in contaminated ground water. So my question is, how effective would it be to clean out mass amount of uranium? First I had to learn about Geobacter and the types of waste created.

Geobacter, as in the overall species, has the ability to transfer electrons. They also as well y get energy from organic material and biomass. They are a key part to bioredemption in destroyed habitats. When the first strain of Geobacter was discovered, the original scientist did not know how helpful it really was. Since it was first discovered in 1987, there was not a lot to explain how it work. The first strain was called Geobacter Metallireducens, and it got energy from iron oxide, in other words rust. Geobacter Sulfurreduncen on the other hand gets energy from petroleum contaminates and uranium. Geobacter Sulfurreduncen, in a sense, eats up the petroleum and turns it into carbon dioxide. Thus killing off the petroleum contaminates and uranium completely. So if the petroleum contaminates and uranium where located in a body of fresh water, that...

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...in with an advance nanowire production. The modified version help improve the bacteria’s ability to isolate uranium proportionally. With the increased ability of isolating the uranium the bacteria was able to clear the uranium out much faster. With the increased nanowires it was also protected even more so. Reguera has patents allowing her to build on her research. Possibly leading to developments in microbial fuel cells.

So in overview Geobacter Sulfurreduncen is a bacteria with the ability to clean out petroleum contaminates and uranium from ground water, soil, and nuclear waste. Given enough time it can also clean out mass amounts of radioactivity from low to high level waste. The time itself depends on the level of waste. With a bacteria like this in the world, humanity has a better chance of surviving. Contaminated ground water can now be a thing of the past.