A team of environmental scientists has found that one kind of oil-eating microbe reshapes droplets to optimize biodegradation.
Key points
- In their study, reported in the journal Science, the researchers isolated Alcanivorax borkumensis bacteria specimens in a lab setting, fed them crude oil, and then watched how they worked together to eat the oil as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- The marine bacterium are known to form biofilms around oil droplets, but how exactly this process works hasn’t previously been fully understood.
- The team has captured the full dynamics of biofilm development by using a microfluidic device that allowed the real-time imaging of bacteria-covered oil droplets. This enabled the team to observe the whole process from initial colonisation through to complete consumption of oil droplets.
- Bacteria that were exposed to the oil for longer formed thin biofilms with numerous branching dendrites.
- These dendritic biofilms decrease the oil–water interfacial tension causing dimples to form on the droplets, which speeds up the bacteria’s consumption by expanding the interface of the oil droplet allowing more bacteria to feed simultaneously.
