Patent ID: 7880053

Claim:
A method of phytoremediation of an environment contaminated with a heavy metal comprising selecting an environment contaminated with a heavy metal; and growing, in that environment, an organism stably transformed to over-express, as compared to a non-transformed organism of the same type, a nucleic acid encoding a plant-derived acyl-CoA-binding protein (ACBP) or a variant of a plant-derived ACBP that binds at least one heavy metal, wherein the organism is a plant or microbe and the plant-derived ACBP is an Arabidopsis ACBP selected from the group consisting of ACBP 1 (SEQ ID NO: 27), ACBP2 (SEQ ID NO: 28), ACBP3 (SEQ ID NO: 29), ACBP4 (SEQ ID NO: 30), ACBP5 (SEQ ID NO: 31), and ACBP6 (SEQ ID NO: 26), and wherein the polynucleotide encoding said Arabidopsis ACBP or variant thereof will hybridize with a polynucleotide encoding said Arabidopsis ACBP under stringent hybridization conditions with a final wash of 0.1×SSC at 65° C.; whereby an amount of heavy metal is removed from the environment.