Bacteria evolve to consume pollution at Pittsburgh steel site
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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania are studying bacteria at the Hazelwood Green site, a former steel mill, to understand how they adapted to decades of industrial pollution.
The 178-acre site, once home to Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. contained soil contaminated with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, collectively known as BTEX, and other pollutants. Scientists collected soil cores from different depths to examine the microbial communities and used DNA sequencing to identify bacteria capable of degrading these contaminants.
The team is testing whether these microbes can use BTEX as a food source, growing them in a minimal medium with only the pollutant as a carbon source. To accelerate the process, they partnered with CMU’s AI Science Foundry, a robotic lab that allows them to screen thousands of bacterial species simultaneously. They are also developing open-source tools like BTEXgenie to predict a microbe’s ability to break down pollution by analyzing its genome.
This research builds on the idea that bioremediation, using microorganisms to remove pollutants, can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional methods like excavation or burial. By understanding how these bacteria evolved to survive and even thrive in contaminated soil, scientists hope to improve bioremediation techniques for other brownfield sites across the Rust Belt and beyond.
