Okay, so, confession time: I’m officially obsessed. Not with TikTok dances (though I’m not gonna lie, I’ve tried a few), but with…bacteria. Specifically, bioluminescent bacteria. Yeah, I know, sounds kinda nerdy, right? But trust me, this is way cooler than it sounds.
Think about it: tiny little organisms, glowing like living stars in the dark depths of the ocean. It’s straight-up magical! When I learned that some glowy guys -like Aliivibrio fischeri (try saying that five times fast!)- had this glow mechanism called luciferin and luciferase that made them glow, like mini lightbulbs in the ocean, I was sold. And they helped squid camouflage so they didn’t get eaten??
I mean, come ON!
Here’s the idea: A. fischeri are super sensitive to stuff in the environment, like pollution. So, if we expose them to different levels of microplastics or heavy metals, we can see how their glow changes. A dimmer glow = a sick ocean. Think of it as giving the ocean a check-up using glowing bacteria!
Okay, I know, I’m getting all science-y. But the cool thing is, this could be a super cheap and effective way to keep tabs on the ocean’s health, especially for places that don’t have tons of money to spend on fancy equipment. I mean, a lab or an oil company wouldn’t have to purchase all these expensive things to see how a pollutant affects sea life; the little A. fischeri can simply say ‘the ocean is sick here’ by going dim.
And that leads to the thought on my mind: how else can we use this mechanism? Can we engineer and create more bioluminescent species to detect for all kinds of pollutants? Can we modify the code so that the bioassays are even more cost-effective? Can the bioassays be performed more rapidly without a sophisticated set of equipment? These are the kinds of thoughts that keep me excited when I imagine using science in a way that solves our climate and environmental problems.
Perhpas we really can save the ocean, one glowing bacterium at a time.
Olivia
#marinebiology #bioluminescence #oceanconservation #science #nerdlife #eczema #youthscientist #savethesea #STEM #bacteria #bioassay #myobsession #research #AliivibrioFischeri
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