UAE Researchers Identify New Bacteria Strain to Clean Water

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UAE Researchers Identify New Bacteria Strain to Clean Water

Two professors in the UAE have identified a novel strain of bacteria from petroleum sludge that can break down pollutants in water in a matter of hours.

Researchers at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) named the new strain UAEU-H3K6M1, which has very interesting bio-remediating abilities to degrade pollutants in water within hours, depending on how much bacteria you put in.

The research work was done by Professors Salman Ashraf and Ranjit Vijayan through a two-year grant funded by the university. The research was published in the July 26 issue of the American Society for Microbiology’s prestigious journal ‘Microbiology Resource Announcements’.

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Representative image, Source: Pixnio

The research comes at a time when the UAE is also focusing on a priority area: the future of clean water.

Dr Ashraf said there are three kinds of approaches: physically, including filters at home and black charcoal filters, chemically using bleach in swimming pools, and biologically where enzymes and bacteria are used in the water.
The third approach where enzymes can break pollutants down and bacteria can eat them up for food and break them down is the UAE researchers’ area of research. “We wanted to see if we could isolate the natural bacteria from the petroleum sludge and see if they can degrade different kinds of organic pollutants in water,” he said.

The novel aspect of the project is the petroleum, which has chemicals that resemble pollutants in the water.
“We did a whole genome sequencing and we were able to identify a novel strain of bacteria from petroleum sludge,” said Dr Ranjit Vijayan, Associate Professor of Biology.
A significant difference in results can usually be witnessed within four hours. Twelve hours ensures the complete destruction of organic pollutant test samples.

Source: Gulf News

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