In an article published by El Mostrador on December 15, the Academic of the Faculty of Sciences of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, states that “in Chile there are several challenges where microbial bioremediation could be an important part of the solution”, since it has the advantage of being environmentally friendly as it allows preserving the ecological balance of the place. He also adds that knowledge about this discipline requires time for research and the generation of pilot experiences that give confidence to the public, for which academia, business and government must work together in order to advance in the development of this type of scientific knowledge. Read the full column below: Nature, for thousands of years, has tended to equilibrium in its different ecosystems, even recovering from at least six mass extinction events. This ability to adapt and recover today allows us to help accelerate some of these processes by selecting organisms with the ability to degrade pollutants, and placing them in the right conditions and places to decontaminate environments that may have been severely damaged by humans. This is called bioremediation. The term was coined in 1980, when the ability of certain microorganisms such as bacteria, microalgae and fungi to degrade toxic compounds, and their potential use in decontaminating disturbed environments, was discovered. Initially, efforts were focused on searching for and discovering organisms in the environment that were capable of doing so naturally; however, with the advance of biotechnology, these organisms can now be modified in the laboratory to improve their capacity to degrade pollutants or to resist aggressive environments. In Chile there are several challenges where microbial bioremediation could be an important part of the solution. For example, treatment of industrial waste, reduction of contaminants in mining tailings, decontamination of surface and groundwater, degradation of plastics, and more efficient transformation of biological waste into gas and fertilizers. One of the advantages of these biological systems over traditional physicochemical treatments is that they can be designed to be environmentally friendly if the organisms selected are, for example, environmental bacteria chosen so as not to destroy the ecological balance of the site to be treated. All this potential, however, requires hours of study and experimentation, which is usually supported by government funds or the universities’ and researchers’ own resources. And, if favorable results are found, more hours to transform the discovery into a product that can be used in the national or international industry. It is in this second stage where there is still a long way to go to generate pilot experiences that give companies confidence in the products developed in the national academy. However, international experience shows that once this process of transferring solutions to the company begins, the returns on investment are high, generating innovations that make the nation that produces them much more competitive. This is why it is important that academia, business and government keep in mind that the efforts to develop these technologies are worthwhile, and how important it is that they manage to align themselves to obtain more and better results.
