ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users and other interested parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. We welcome suggestions for topics and content.
Previous Issues are available.
Cleaning up the environment is a monumental task, now consuming many billions of dollars annually. A new field of study, molecular environmental science, is emerging to contribute to effective waste remediation by investigating the routes contaminants take to their final destinations in the environment. These routes include formation of new compounds via interaction with their surroundings, transport through soils and groundwater, uptake in plant and animal life, and possible immobilization in benign forms. Bacteria, it turns out, are potentially key agents with the ability to purify contaminated soils and water supplies. Most of the key reactions for bioremediation take place in water, so the solubility of contaminants makes all the difference in their transport through the environment.