A pollution-eating bacteria first found in sewage sludge may have evolved its talents in response to human contamination of the environment, researchers said on Thursday. They published the genetic sequence of the bug, called Dehalococcoides ethenogenes Strain 195, and said it showed some surprising flexibility. “The genome sequence contributes greatly to the understanding of what makes this microbe tick and why its metabolic diet is so unusual,” said Rekha Seshadri of The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland, who helped lead the study. D. ethenogenes, discovered by a team at Cornell University in New York, is being used at 17 polluted sites in 10 states.
