Toxic Montana Lake's Extremophiles Might Be a Medical Treasure Trove 133
EagleHasLanded writes "The Berkeley Pit, an abandoned open pit copper mine in Butte, Montana — part of the largest Superfund site in the U.S. — is filled with 40 billion gallons of acidic, metal-contaminated water. For years the water was believed to be too toxic to support life, until Andrea and Donald Stierle, a pair of organic chemists at the University of Montana, discovered that the Pit is a rich source of unusual extremophiles, 'many of which have shown great promise as producers of potential anti-cancer agents and anti-inflammatories.' In the course of their ongoing investigation, the two self-described 'bioprospectors' have also discovered an uncommon yeast, which might play a significant role in cleaning up the site. In the meantime, the Pit has become a tourist attraction in Butte, which charges $2 for the opportunity to take in the view from the Viewing Stand."
Re:Not really BP (Score:3, Informative)
"BP-owned toxic lake" I'll be the last to support our crony commie-capitalist system, but that's pretty far fetched agitprop.
They did say BP-owned, not BP-caused/created. So technically it's accurate.
Re:Nature is very very versataile (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How did they get there? (Score:5, Informative)
There's two effects in play here for bacteria evolved locally... The first is that bacteria reproduce rapidly [1], so the bacteria around the pit have gone through an enormous number of generations. (254,000 from the closing of the pit to the present day assuming an average generation time of just one hour [2].) The second is the staggering number of potential ancestors - in the billions in soil surrounding the pit, fecal bacteria from birds and animals, etc... etc...
The result is a essentially a giant distributed memory MIMD [wikipedia.org] parallel processor [3] attacking the problem of colonizing the waters of the pit.
As I point out above, there are numerous potential ancestors. If I had to guess, I'd say they likely didn't colonize the pit directly - they likely colonized the margins and gradually drifted inwards toward the pit with successive generations each able to tolerate a higher level of acid and toxic materials.
[1] As little as half an hour under ideal circumstances - which is why food safety recommendations want things kept cool and cooled/or heated rapidly. A very small amount of bacterial contamination can become a big problem in a short time because bacterial population growth is exponential.
[2] Which is why fruit flies, with a generation time of ten days, are popular for genetics studies.
[3] Incidentally, the same is true of the early Earth. Creationists like to point out the unlikelihood of life arising because of the low odds of the right chemical conditions arising - but with thousands of lighting strikes (to take one proposed cause) occurring daily in a wide variety of locations, you have the same distributed memory MIMD effect. Though the chance of a given combination occurring is low, when you're trying multiple solutions in parallel, the odds of that combination appearing rise dramatically.
Re:Migratory birds. (Score:5, Informative)
And why doesn't Green peace protest against BP? Gulf spill comes to mind.
You think they don't?
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/bp/rebranded/ [greenpeace.org.uk]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10771805 [bbc.co.uk]