Environmental Pollution

Knowing the genome of many organisms allows us to find genes that may benefit all people. This is particularly true of genes that can disarm environmental pollutants. With the technology now available to excise genes from one organism and introduce them into the genome of another organism, we have the potential to have our cake and eat it too. Imagine placing a bacterial gene that can convert mercury into a relatively harmless form or degrade a potent herbicide that has a long half-life in nature. What about plants that can remove metals from a mine spoil so that the ground can be revegetated? All of this is happening already and much more research is being conducted to learn how we can make our environment a safer place to live. The field of research is called bioremediation.