The drainage water contains high concentration of selenium that is derived from agricultural waste water. The Central Valley of California streches 450 miles and it has Sierra Nevada at the east and Coast Ranges at the west. One goal of the Leighton group is to develop in-situ bioremediation techniques for reducing selenite and selenate to elemental selenium that is a less toxic and mobile species. As part of the group we ars currently isolating microorganisms from the Central Valley Drainage Systems for further studies. One significane of thi project is to contribute to a better and cleaner environment.
Objectives Evaluate the diversity of microbial populations in toxic metal damaged environments.
Assess the frequency of occurrence of strains within the microbial population. Assess the selenium remediation potential of bacteria isolated from the Central Valley Drainage and Treatment System. The bacteria we isolated will be used for further taxonomic and bioremediation studies. Also we were able to assess the selenium remediation potential of bacteria isolated from the Agatha Canal. This remediation potential experiment was conducted by inoculating each isolate into liquid medium with a defined amount of selenite.