A team led by LMU chemist Lena Daumann has demonstrated for the first time that bacteria can use certain radioactive elements to sustain their metabolism.
As well as being a useful material in all kinds of key technologies, lanthanides are important for bacteria, which use the rare earth metals in their metabolism. It turns out, however, that they are not as irreplaceable as previously thought, as an international and interdisciplinary team led by Professor Lena Daumann from the Department of Chemistry at LMU has demonstrated: Certain bacteria can use the radioactive elements americium and curium instead of the lanthanides – and even prefer them sometimes.
Bacteria that use lanthanides are widespread in the environment. They belong to the so-called methylotrophs, which can use methanol or methane as carbon and energy sources. To do this, they take up lanthanides and incorporate them into an important metabolic enzyme, a lanthanide-dependent methanol dehydrogenase. The elements americium and curium, members of the radioactive actinides, are very similar to the lanthanides when it comes to key chemical properties such as size and charge. “And so we asked ourselves whether the bacteria can use actinides instead of their essential lanthanides,” says Daumann.
Now the researchers have demonstrated that this is actually the case. They carried out an in-vivo study of two methylotrophic bacterial strains in collaboration with the Helmholtz Center in Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). “We fed the microbes various elements and showed that they incorporate americium and curium and grow just as well with these elements,” explains Daumann. It is important that the actinides have the same oxidation state and are of a similar size to the lanthanides normally used, so that they fit in the active center of methanol dehydrogenase. Additional in-vitro studies with isolated methanol dehydrogenase also demonstrate that the enzyme works with the actinides and exhibits similar activities.
“We could thus show for the first time that organisms can use these radioactive elements for life processes,” emphasizes Daumann. When the bacteria were offered a mixture of various lanthanides and actinides, they even preferred americium and curium ahead of some lanthanides. The ability of the bacteria to incorporate radioactive actinides is also interesting with respect to potential applications: “Methylotrophic bacteria could potentially be used in bioremediation or in the separation and recycling of lanthanides and actinides. Such difficult-to-separate mixtures are often found in spent nuclear fuel,” says Daumann.
JOURNAL
Angewandte Chemie
ARTICLE TITLE
Minor Actinides Can Replace Essential Lanthanides in Bacterial Life
Bacteria survive on radioactive
elements
Bacteria can replace lanthanides with actinides to sustain their metabolism
Peer-Reviewed PublicationBacteria that feed on methanol are able to grow on certain rare earth elements as well as their radioactive relatives. These findings suggest a possible role for such bacteria in the decontamination of areas where actinides are spilled, or in the separation of lanthanides and actinides for analytical or preparative purposes, according to a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Lanthanides belong to the rare earth elements widely used in electronics and energy technologies. With one exception, they are not radioactive, they are abundant in the earth's crust, and some lanthanides such as lanthanum and neodymium even play a crucial role in bacterial metabolism. Actinides, which include uranium and plutonium, are their heavy, radioactive counterparts, most of which are not found naturally on earth. Now, Lena Daumann from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, and her international interdisciplinary team have discovered that some actinides can replace essential lanthanides in the metabolism of methylotrophic bacteria.
Methylotrophic bacteria, so-called as they use methanol as their energy source, contain lanthanides in their methanol-oxidizing enzyme. The researchers observed that these bacteria could also take up actinide ions into this enzyme, using them for methanol metabolism in the same way as they would use lanthanides. This observation was particularly valid when the actinide ions were the same size and had the same stable +III oxidation states as the corresponding lanthanides. The bacteria even preferred americium and curium as actinides over some lanthanides when presented with a mixture of lanthanides and actinides, the researchers reported.
Americium and curium showed a stable +III oxidation state, which appeared to be particularly important. “When we used plutonium, which is known to have higher oxidation states, our bacteria did not grow, nor did the isolated enzymes work with it either,” Daumann says. This knowledge will be useful for future applications. The team plans to explore the ability of the bacteria to extract actinides from radioactive waste or to separate out specific elements from mixtures.
Actinides such as plutonium, americium, and curium can be generated in nuclear reactors and are used in research, the nuclear industry, and many other technologies. Americium is even a source of ionizing radiation in commercial smoke detectors. However, actinides are highly radioactive and hazardous elements, which have to be handled with great care at special facilities. Spillages of radioactive substances are always of great concern. Dauman proposes “putting these bacteria to use to help clean up radioactive spills,” as a possible future application.
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About the Author
Lena Daumann is a Professor at the Chemistry Department at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany. Using model complexes, kinetic studies, and spectroscopic techniques, her interdisciplinary research group elucidates the mechanisms of action of lanthanides in lanthanide-dependent bacteria and enzymes.
JOURNAL
Angewandte Chemie International Edition
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Cells
ARTICLE TITLE
Minor Actinides Can Replace Essential Lanthanides in Bacterial Life
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