In California, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found oil-degrading bacteria that work hard at eating up oil spills. By studying and simulating in a lab the largest oil spill in history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, they found some answers in water samples they collected from the spill location four years later. They found rapid growth of a particular microbe, which they analyzed and conducted DNA sequencing on to identify how it degraded the oil.
They found that the dispersants used in treating the oil spill formed tiny oil droplets deep below the ocean surface where the naturally occurring microbes are located. The microbes used the tiny oil droplets as their food source causing them to grow.
Through their DNA sequencing, researchers found the specific genes responsible for the oil munching, which can help them find other organisms with similar genes that can degrade and eat up oil.