“One man’s waste is the other mans bread and butter”, or in this case, man- induced disaster is microbes dinner. Biotechnologists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered sea dwelling microbes that started to degrade the oil from the gulf. This microbes previously took up residence on the world’s ocean floors and are now rising and proliferating the seas. Giant oil plumes that formed due to the oil spill has been observed to reduce in size and appears to be degrading in  a fast pace.  It was expected that naturally occurring microbes will help restore the sea conditions in the gulf and other affected areas by the oil spill but it was not anticipated that the microscopic wonders will work so fast.

The deep ocean water microbes were brought to the spotlight and unexpectedly became the heroes for our environment when  Berkeley Lab PhyloChip was brought to the scene. The PhyloChip is a DNA-based microarray which analyzes ocean samples, detecting an determining the different species of bacteria. Well, its great to hear that the gulf is on its way to recovery.