Genetic potential of oil-eating bacteria from the BP oil spill decoded

Microbiologists at The University of Texas at Austin and their colleagues have cracked the genetic code of how bacteria broke down oil to help clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, revealing that some bacteria have far greater potential for consuming oil than was previously known. The findings, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, have applications for responding to future oil spills and other ecological disasters, while shedding light on the ways in which tiny microbes played an outsized role in limiting damage from the 2010 spill caused by the explosion of a BP oil rig.

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