The first patent organism in the world that can feed on oil to remediate spillage.
Scientific name: Pseudomonas putida
Common name: Superbug
Gram reaction: Gram negative
Habitat: Ubiquitous
Others: Aerobic and flagellated
In 1971, it sounded conflicting that a living organism should be patented. However, Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty won the right to such in court since he genetically engineered the microorganism. The microbe is Pseudomonas putida, fondly called the superbug.
Imagine the government suggesting we all go back to the caveman’s era because modern life expends petroleum, causing oil spillage. Just before you purchase your fur and slingshot, like a knight in shining armor, the superbug comes to you with hopes.
Four naturally occurring microorganisms were capable of degrading hydrocarbons found in petroleum; however, there was so much rivalry among them, and as such, they were not capable of working together. This led the genius Chakrabarty to engineer the needed genes into a single organism — which is the superbug.
Through the alkane hydroxylase genes conferred by the engineered horizontal gene transfer through plasmids, phages, or transposons, the superbug carries out aerobic oxidative degradation in which a hydroxyl group (–OH) is added to the substrate being degraded. Other enzymes, such as dioxygenases and dehydrogenase, also give their support.
Pseudomonas putida KT2440 keeps getting improved with adaptive evolution to create mutated KT2440 strains that overcome the limitations the old strains had. New strains have been able to digest xylose and galactose, evolved to have higher acid tolerance and produce muconic acid from the glucose and xylose in lignocellulosic hydrolysates.
Aside from hydrocarbons like Naphthalene, Pseudomonas putida KT2440 has been used to remediate arsenic, copper, and mercury. It degrades formaldehyde completely (stoichiometrically) to give off CO2.
The MC4 strain was mutated into the MC4-5222 to be the only successful organism at this time, to degrade the toxic 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP) stoichiometrically to give off chloride.
Just like inviting a friend over to munch down on a large pizza, the degradation of Naphthalene is enhanced when the mutated ND6 strain shares the required gene with the KT2440 strain.
Your farm would need it as a rhizobacterium promoting growth and getting rid of soil pollutants. The strain PB1 gives a 100% degradation of the toxic organic pesticide chlorpyrifos.
Now, don’t be too relaxed because our super friend has proven to be an opportunistic pathogen with resistance to antibiotics. It should be applied in a regulated manner in required microbial loads.
The superbug earned its name as it doesn’t seem to have any specialty.
