“Toxic Mine Waste” May Be Rich Medical Resource!
July 28th, 2006 by Elliott Maynard
After a Copper Mine in Butte, Montana closed in 1982, the pit mine filled with groundwater, becaming a Toxic Lake - an “extreme environment,” where “normal” life forms could not exist. Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites dropped the lake’s pH to 2.5, making it an “Acid Pit,” in which normal aquatic life could not survive.
In 1995, Andrea Stierle, a chemist from the University of Montana, analyzed the lake’s waters and was surprised to discover novel forms of bacteria and fungi in the lake. Stierle’s science team found a strain of fungus that produces a compound that binds to a receptor in the human body which causes migranes, and thus has the potential to block migrane headaches. The group also discovered another strain of penicillium fungus which inhibits the growth of lung cancer cells. Most recently, the researchers discovered that another strain of the penicillium fungus produced a novel compound (berkelic acid), which reduces the growth-rate of ovarian cancer cells by 50 percent.
Stierle and his team of researchers are now working to identify more of these extremophiles before the Berkeley Pit Lake Toxic Site is cleaned up. In the words of Stierle, “It’s exciting to know that something toxic and dangerous might contain something of value.” Perhaps most significant is the fact that this type of research is part of an evolving new paradigm, which focuses on the study of new pharmaceutical solutions produced from “extremophiles” - organisms which have evolved under conditions which are often more analogous to those on extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars, and the Moons of Jupiter, than of Earth itself.
…Source: New Scientist, July 15, 2006, p. 19, Journal of Organic Chemistry, V71, p. 5357.