Not recommended you make lemonade, but it turns out there might be some good that can come of it.
Scientists are racing to identify the weird microorganisms growing in Berkeley Pit Lake in Butte, Montana, before it’s cleaned up.
The “lake” was once a copper mine. It filled with water when the mine was closed 24 years ago.
Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites give the lake a pH of 2.5 that makes it impossible for most aquatic life to survive. In 1995 Stierle discovered novel forms of fungi and bacteria in the lake. More recently her team has found a strain of the pithomyces fungi producing a compound that binds to a receptor that causes migraines and could block headaches, while a strain of penicillium fungi makes a different compound that inhibits the growth of lung cancer cells.
This week they reveal that a novel compound called berkelic acid from another new strain of penicillium fungus reduces the rate of ovarian cancer cell growth by 50 per cent (Journal of Organic Chemistry, vol 71, p 5357).
Wild.
“One man’s toxic waste is another man’s treasure,” eh? Maybe the elusive cancer cure will be found, not in the Amazon rain forests (if any are left), but in the very low (or high) Ph wastes with heavy metals entrained that millions of superfund dollars are spent to “clean up.”
Now THAT would “iron-ic.” (Sorry. One of those “couldn’t resist” moments.)
John