The Fantastic World of Science

It’s commonly known that microbes such as bacteria are used in the production of products like yogurt and bread. However, it’s less known that bacteria can be incredibly useful for producing industrial chemicals such as acetone, a powerful solvent with wide uses in the chemical industry. In the chemical industry, using bacteria and other microbes for producing commodity chemicals is relatively new. With the rise of the petroleum industry, by the 1960’s most chemical producers preferred petroleum over other alternatives for chemical production because it was a cheap starting material. Today, there is precedent for microbes such as yeast and E. coli being used for producing ethanol and acetone, but they require a significant amount of farmland to feed on. This has motivated research into engineering microbes that can feed on industrial waste and produce useful chemicals. In the 1990's scientists began researching ways to genetically engineer a specific strain of bacteria of the  Cl...

  During late summer of 2021, the Bootleg fire ravaged the Upper Klamath Basin area in Oregon, destroying vegetation and damaging its wildlife. Surveys of the area following the fire season in autumn of that year showed that many rivers and tributaries ran black, polluted by ash and debris. Runoff from autumn rains transferred wildfire sediments into the river, killing off the native trout population. However, it was observed that in an area of the Dixon creek, a tributary flowing into the Sprague River, that lush green vegetation was preserved and water flowing from the creek was clear. The difference? Dixon creek was home to 8 beaver dams that effectively filtered sediment from the water upstream.  The Sprague River runs through Klamath County in Oregon This sighting agreed with previous observations of the effects of beaver dams on riverbank ecosystems post-wildfire in the western U.S. It was also known that beaver dams in a river system could filter sediment from eroded r...