Suppose that you've been hired by a firm interested in using bacteria to clean up organic solvents found in toxic waste dumps. Your new employer is particularly interested in finding cells that are capable of breaking a molecule called benzene into less-toxic compounds. Where would you go to look for bacteria that can metabolize benzene as an energy or carbon source? How would you design an enrichment culture capable of isolating benzene-metabolizing species?

Video transcript

Welcome back. Let's look at our next question. Some bacteria have the ability to degrade oil present in water bodies. The use of bacteria to remove such environmental pollutants is an example of, Well let's look through our answer choices. Choice A says bioremediation. Well this is the correct term for this. Um You can think of the word remediation making something better. So bioremediation is using bacteria to remove environmental pollution. Let's look through other answer choices to understand why they're not correct. Choice. B says biological control. Well this sounds similar but it's a slightly different thing going on. That's the controlling pasts using natural mechanisms introduced by humans. So that would be introducing say a predator to the past. You're trying to get rid of parasites that would kill them um herbivores that would take care of them. So natural mechanisms um to control whatever pest you want to get rid of but with human control over that process. So that's not uh what would refer to using bacteria to say degrade pollutants. Do I see his vaccination? Well hopefully um it's pretty clear why that's not our correct answer. Since that's inducing immunity with antigens such as weak inactivated or recombinant protein um from disease from viruses or bacteria. And then finally choice. The disinfection. Just methods of killing infectious agents usually chemicals such as bleach or you have UV light, anything that would destroy things like bacteria and viruses. So again the use of bacteria to remove environmental pollutions as when you use bacteria that can degrade oil present in water is an example of choice. A bioremediation. See you in the next video.