Last year’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico sparked the imagination of 16-year-old Nova Scotian Samantha Wright-Smith. Reading about the environmental impacts of toxic chemical dispersants used to deal with the spill, Samantha’s wondered whether oil-eating bacteria might do the job.

Oil spills occur routinely from the production, transport, storage, and use of oil. An estimated 18,000 to 24,000 spills on land are reported annually according to Environment Canada. The use of nature’s micro-organisms to clean up oil spills is called bioremediation, in which oil is consumed instead of simply being broken down into smaller amounts and moved to another environment.

To find oil-eating bacteria, Samantha looked around her own community, finding an old automotive garage where plenty of oil has spilled onto the ground over the years.

“I thought if there were bacteria living in that soil some of them might well be oil-eaters,” says the Grade 11 student at South Colchester Academy in Brookfield, NS.

She was right.

She took her soil samples St. Mary’s University in Halifax and the lab of to Dr. Zhongmin Dong, under whose guidance she enriched the samples to grow more bacteria and then tested them to see if they could degrade oil.

“It was really exciting one day to see all the bacteria swimming around. The bacteria did degrade the oil although we aren’t sure by how much,” she says.

Three major populations of oil-eating bacteria were identified through a DNA analysis.

Dr. Dong says more research is needed to understand the discovery’s full potential.

“One of the things I learned was that scientific research never ends,” says Samantha, who also demonstrated the dedication science requires, coping with a 100-km commute from her home to the lab. “I could only go once a week and would spend all day there. It was hard to keep up with my other school work,” she says.

Before the sanofi-aventis Biotalent Challenge, Samantha had not considered post-secondary science studies but she enjoyed the experience so much she now thinks science might be her best option.