Phytoremediation of Ionic and Methyl Mercury Pollution

Technical Report · Sun Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/833504· OSTI ID:833504

Meagher, Richard B

Our long-term objective is to enable highly productive plant species to extract, resist, detoxify, and/or sequester toxic organic and heavy metal pollutants by applying scientific strategies and technologies from a rapidly developing field called phytoremediation. The phytoremediation of toxic elemental and organic pollutants employs a variety of different approaches (Meagher, 2000). Our current specific objectives are to use transgenic plants to control the chemical species, electrochemical state, transport, and aboveground binding of mercury to (a) prevent methylmercury from entering the food-chain, (b) remove mercury from polluted sites, and (c) hyperaccumulate mercury in aboveground tissues for later harvest and waste disposal. Various parts of this strategy are being critically tested by examining different genes in model plants and field species and comparing the results to control plants, as we reviewed previously (Meagher et al., 2000; Rugh et al., 2000). A positive spin-off from this work on mercury has been a strategy for the phytoremediation of arsenic (Dhankher et al., 2002) and cadmium (Dhankher et al., 2003).

• Research Organization: Genetics Department University of Georgia Athens, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (US)
• OSTI ID: 833504
• Report Number(s): EMSP-70054--2003
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
ARSENIC
CADMIUM
GENES
MERCURY
METHYLMERCURY
POLLUTANTS
POLLUTION
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
TRANSGENIC PLANTS
TRANSPORT
WASTE DISPOSAL