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From: Secretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Newly Identified Microbial Process Could Reduce Toxic Methylmercury Levels
Date: Jun 5, 2017 17:00 UTC
Reply-To:
ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
In-Reply-To:
There's an interesting mix of chemical and biological techniques in this work, with lab safety history significance.
- Ralph
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. â?? A team led by the Department of Energyâ??s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has identified a novel microbial process that can break down toxic methylmercury in the environment, a fundamental scientific discovery that could potentially reduce mercury toxicity levels and support health and risk assessments.
Methylmercury is a neurotoxin that forms in nature when mercury interacts with certain microbes living in soil and waterways. It accumulates at varying levels in all fishâ??particularly large predatory fish such as tuna and swordfishâ??and, when consumed in large quantities, can potentially cause neurological damage and developmental disorders, especially in children.
A previous ORNL-led study, published in Science in 2013, unlocked the genetic code that led scientists to accurately identify microbes responsible for methylmercury production in the environment. Following this finding, the ORNL team has now discovered which bacteria perform the reverse process, called demethylation. Details are published in Science Advances.
â??Much attention has focused on mercury methylation or how methylmercury forms, but few studies to date have examined microbial demethylation, or the breakdown of methylmercury at environmentally relevant conditions,â?? said Baohua Gu, co-author and a team lead in ORNLâ??s Mercury Science Focus Area.
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