Before now, efforts have been made to reduce phosphates in fertilizers. and Canada have, therefore, set a target of cutting phosphorus runoff into Lake Erie by 40 percent. Read Also: All the Ingredients for a Mass Extinction Event Are Now in Place Study Shows Algal blooms usually result from agricultural runoffs that carry the nutrient into water bodies, such as Lake Erie. There is a limited supply of phosphorus in nature to sustain cyanobacteria. “This diversity among bacterial strains is precisely what is responsible for the phenomenon that a reduction in phosphorus can lead to an increase in MC production,” explained Ferdi Hellweger, lead author and Water Quality Engineering chair at the Institute of Environmental Technology at TU Berlin. More worryingly, the reduction in their number enables some other bacteria in the group to produce more of the toxic microcystin for protection.Ĭertain strains of cyanobacteria produce loads of microcystin while some others make very little if any. Oxygen levels in lakes reduce as cyanobacteria pack up. This explains why reducing phosphorus levels has been a preferred strategy for combating cyanobacteria globally. The toxin attaches to sites on critical enzymes for life processes in the microbes, thus shielding them from harsh hydrogen peroxide.īlue-green algae depend greatly on phosphorus for sustenance. Read Also: University of Missouri Study Shows Urgent Need for Clean Water Act AmendmentĬyanobacteria use microcystin for protection. Microcystis, one of the microbes in the group, had released high levels of the powerful liver toxin microcystin (MC) into Lake Erie. They can also mar the quality of drinking water.Īround half a million residents of the Toledo area were denied tap water for about three days in 2014 as a result of contamination caused by cyanobacteria. Also known as blue-green algae, this group of photosynthetic microbes can produce strong toxins capable of harming aquatic animals. Toxicity dilemmaĪlgal blooms in areas such as Lake Erie house cyanobacteria. The study hints at a need to revise the approach that is currently favored for tackling dangerous algal blooms. “The results suggest that biologically informed models are able to reproduce emergent properties of blooms that are not predicted by traditional models.” “The big advance here was to integrate our understanding of the microbiology of the blooms into predictive models,” said study co-author Gregory Dick, an environmental microbiologist from U-M. Researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) were also involved in it. The new research was published in the journal Science. Read Also: Fish Species Put Up With Ocean Acidification By Means Of Rapid Evolution However, findings newly published by Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) researchers revealed that this approach may worsen toxicity in water bodies.
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The strategy of cutting the levels of phosphorus in lakes is an effective one for checking hazardous algal blooms.