Microbes that convert toxic mercury into methylmercury

How to convert the toxic mercury into methylmercury? Everyone should know that mercury is a toxic substance that spreads globally, mainly through coal combustion, industrial use and natural processes such as volcanic eruptionsThis chemical element accumulates in large quantities in the aquatic food chain, especially in large fishDifferent forms of mercury are widely found in sediments and waterMethyl mercury, on the other hand, is produced by mercury and is known as a powerful neurotoxinIt is a neurotoxic environmental pollutant that mainly invades the central nervous system and can cause language and memory impairmentsThe main areas of damage are the loyles of the brain and the cerebellum, whose neurotoxicity may disrupt the re-ingtake of glutamate and cause abnormal gene expression in nerve cellsUnlike inorganic mercury, which emits inorganic mercury from mines and factories, methylmercury can enter the central nervous system through the blood-brain barrier and pass through the placenta to reach the developing fetus"text-align:center;"img src""alt"""microbial" title"""Microbes that convert toxic mercury into methylmercury", scientists have known that when mercury is released into the environment, certain bacteria can convert it into highly toxic methylmercuryYet how exactly bacteria do this has long puzzled scientistsTheir challenge is to find proteins that transfer methyl groups and identify the genes responsible for the methyl mercury production processIn March 2013, researchers from the U.SDepartment of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, solved the puzzle by providing the genetic basis for the microbial mercury methylation process, which could have far-reaching consequencesidentified two genes by combining chemical principles with genome sequencesThey named it hgcA and hgcBBy experimenting with the removal of these genes from two strains at once, the researchers obtained a mutation that lost methylmercury production, and then inserted them to re-recover methylmercury production, so the researchers found that both gene clusters exist in all known mercury methylation bacteria, and they predicted that more than 50 other microbes had similar genes, so mercury methylation could occurOctober 2015, ORNL scientist Mircea Podar and colleagues looked more broadly for these genes in samples from around the world, from animals to humans Their research shows that methylmercury is produced by more bacterial species living in a wider ecosystem than we think One surprising finding is that the highest copy of some methylation genes comes from the melting permafrost of Arctic Alaska This is a cause for concern because, as climate change, annual melting of snow will continue to allow mercury pollutants to move from melting snow into the moss that can be converted into methylmercury first, wastewater treatment plants and bioreactors appear to have bacteria that produce methylmercury genes the future, and in a whole bacterial community, studies of gene activation could help reveal whether there is a large amount of methylmercury produced in these facilities The team also found that the methylmercury gene appeared to belong to bacteria that had not previously been successfully cultured or sequenced in vitro, suggesting that the production of methylmercury could be extremely common Importantly, these genes do not appear in the human gut, and are not present in the mammalian gut flora Birds also lack them But they exist in the invertebrate microbiome group studied by the team marine fish in the second and vastest oceans is the largest source of most methylmercury on Earth so it is necessary to understand where methylmercury is produced from a human risk perspective However, even if marine fish eventually ingest methylmercury and then pass it on to humans, the researchers found that bacteria in the ecosystem do not appear to have these genes It's only possible that because these genes don't exist in the sampling portion of the ocean, bacteria at different depths should have them, or methyl mercury in the ocean may come from a different non-bacterial source Researchers have taken further marine samples for further research by revealing where and where mercury methylation occurs and where it doesnot occur, researchers hope to decipher why bacteria first evolved their ability to produce methylmercury In a recent study, researchers from the U.S Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, developed a molecular probe that allows environmental scientists to more efficiently detect the genes needed to convert mercury from mercury in the environment to more toxic methylmercury The findings were published online July 15, 2016 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology with the headline "Development and Broad-Of-Broad-Cyque and Clade-Specific Quantitative Probes for Assessing Mercury In The Environment." "Today, we have a fast, easy-to-use tool that can be applied in any environment to test the microbes that allow mercury to be methylated and determine the amount of these microbes that exist," said Geoff Christensen, the paper's first author, a postdoctoral fellow and ORNL scientist In the new study, , researchers tested the probes in 31 microbial strains known to produce methylmercury, with a 94 percent diagnosis rate This verification process is critical because it helps to use these probes in the field in the next step to assist in determining the amount of methyl mercury that may occur in any given environment One potential application is to test water, filters and sediments from wastewater treatment plants, said Dwayne Elias, a scientist at orORNL Biosciences Such testing may be cheap and fast and provide vital information to environmental managers, utility companies, and governments "We found these genes in a wastewater treatment plant, so they're probably there somewhere else, " elias said "The development of these molecular probes and their validation methods represents another step towards a better understanding of the microbial mercury methylation process and the design of ways to reduce this health risk learn more about microbial, microbial fermentation and other related content, you can follow the forum, discuss with people in the industry, or learn about the advanced technology provided by the relevant enterprises in the microbial fermentation technical cooperation project