This Bacteria Can Find a Landmine
11th July 2021
“The main rate-limiting factor holding back global demining efforts is not the actual removal of buried landmines,” researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in Microbial Biotechnology last October, “but rather pinpointing their exact locations.”
Current landmine detection methods mostly require people to be put in harm’s way, the authors say, but they have a possible solution: glowing bacteria.
In the presence of a telltale explosive chemical, these genetically modified E. coli become like “a miniature firefly,” Hebrew University microbiologist Shimshon Belkin told the New York Times’ Elizabeth Landau.