A soil microbe has been quietly and competently cleaning up what would otherwise be a persistent environmental pollutant, researchers report in the Nov. 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Studies had established that the soil-dwelling bacterium Pseudomonas pavonaceae breaks down a pesticide residue called 3-chloroacrylic acid. Richard V. Wolfenden and Christopher M. Horvat of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wanted to determine how long this residue would remain in the environment if the bacterium didn’t digest it.