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One quest of bioremediation researchers has been to find bacteria that completely dechlorinate chloroethenes, among the most common industrial pollutants in soils and groundwater. Although scientists knew from soil samples that such bacteria must exist, known strains either have been incapable of removing the last chlorine or did so inefficiently.
Now, meet BAV1, a strain of Dehalococcoides that uses vinyl chloride directly as a metabolic electron acceptor, producing ethene and inorganic chloride. Isolated from a sample collected from a chloroethene-contaminated aquifer in Oscoda, Mich. The bacterium is interesting not just for its dechlorinating capabilities, author says, but also for its unique physical properties: It has an unusual disklike shape and "peculiar filamentous appendages" of unknown function.
But it's the degradation of vinyl chloride that holds the interest of the bioremediation community
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