Figure 1. Natural oil gelation of some sampled water under 200rpm shaking.
Water is an important source of life for not only humans but
the animals that inhabit it. Ever since the result of massive oil spills bio remediation
has been an important topic of interest for finding natural non chemical
solutions to disperse or absorb the contaminant. Samir and colleagues (2017)
noted that visco-elastic gels made up or organic solvents and water had been
forming in the Arabian Gulf, and these natural gelatin contained microbial
communities with biodegrading functions.
In their study they conducted an
experiment to see how the gels formed which resulted them shaking coastal water
samples with 3g of crude oil each at 200rpm at 30degree Celsius for 4 months,
to result in spontaneous gelatinization, due to shaking. The study conducted
with various other water samples resulted in a gel forming mainly due to the
oil addition, meaning the oil found in the water removes oil by trapping it
together, and having bacterial communities degrade it. The bacterial
communities found in the gels using culturing dependent and independent
methods. The cultural depending method study resulted in microbial sterility
due to the acidic chemicals used to perform the test. The cultural independent
method was able to be used to identify microorganisms by expanding the 16s rDNA
gene and compared to those found in a gene bank.
Original Article:
Radwan SA, Al-Mailem DM, Kansour MK (2017). Gelatinizing oil
in water and its removal via bacteria inhabiting the gels. Nature.com/
Scientific Report. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14296-x.pdf
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