News > Geek > La Brea Tar Pits is ALIVE!

news
MONDAY MAY 14 2007 12:00 PM

"The La Brea Tar Pits is nothing but tar and bones," our parents used to tell us. But we knew better. When we thought of the bubbling primordial vista smack in the middle of suburban sprawl, we dreamed of all life and wonder and skateboarding dinosaur pals that might be lying in wait, just beneath the surface. Some of those dreaming kids grew up and became environmental scientists, and still they were perturbed by the pits, especially the methane gas bubbles that they constantly emitted. These bubbles had previously been explained as a byproduct of continuous dinosaur decomposition and petroleum production, but the intrepid scientists had the tenacity to look closer and deeper. While what they found wasn't exactly skateboarding dinosaur pals, it is still light years away from what anyone had ever thought.

Environmental scientists at UC Riverside have discovered that the Rancho La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., house hundreds of new species of bacteria with unusual properties, allowing the bacteria to survive and grow in heavy oil and natural asphalt.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Now, as you can imagine, bacteria comfortable with living in as harsh and unforgiving an environment as a fucking tar pit are no ordinary bacteria. A cross between something out of Jurassic Park and something out of X-Men, these microbes are ancient and mutant and tough and unlike anything anyone's ever seen before.

Trapped in soil that was mixed with heavy oil nearly 28,000 years ago, the bacteria are uniquely adapted to the pits' oil and natural asphalt, and contain three previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products, the researchers report.

"We were surprised to find these bacteria because asphalt is an extreme and hostile environment for life to survive," said Jong-Shik Kim, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Sciences, who initiated the study. "It's clear, however, that these living organisms can survive in heavy oil mixtures containing many highly toxic chemicals. Moreover, these bacteria survive with no water and little or no oxygen."

Kim and Robert Crowley, the research paper's co-author, speculate that he bacteria were probably trapped in the asphalt tons of years ago and have just evolved of their own accord, all cut off from the outside world, with these interesting side effects, But hey, did you catch that one part? The part about previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products? Yeah, Kim and Crowley did, too. It may very well be the best part of the whole discovery.

The bacteria and their enzymes have potential application for bioremediation (cleaning oil spills), medical treatments (new medicines), alternative energy (biofuels), enhanced oil recovery, and industrial applications (biochemicals and biotechnology).

Once again, amazing. This is why science will always be the most mind-bogglingly wonderful thing ever: with a world this vast, there's absolutely no shortage of places to explore or spectacular and helpful things to find, even in your own backyard. Now just keep digging a little deeper in the tar pits, guys, and we just might hit skateboarding-dinosaur gold.