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Show 265 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH The Berkeley Pit is an EPA superfund site that is contaminated with acid mine drainage. An unknown yeast, BP2-0-A, which currently thrives in the Berkeley Pit, is a potential tool for bioremediation of this contaminated area. Researchers at Montana Tech observed that this yeast accumulates heavy metals by removing the toxic metals from the Berkeley Pit water. Our collaborators are currently expanding upon these findings pertinent to the use of extracellu-lar polymeric substances while we are currently investigating the ability of this strain of yeast to bind heavy metals intracellularly. Small organic molecules within the yeast are thought to be responsible for the intracellular binding of the heavy metals. These molecules can be extracted from the yeast for experimentation. The researchers at Montana Tech were able to show that these extracts bind heavy metals and are also antibacterial. In our lab, preliminary experiments are being conducted to optimize the fractionation process and analyze the levels of metal binding. Fractionation involves separating the extracted molecules by polarity, but also reduces systematically the number of compounds in each sample to facilitate future isolation of molecules. These samples are incubated with copper, zinc, and iron then analyzed by inductively coupled plasma (ICP). Results from these experiments will provide qualitative information about the compounds performing the metal binding and quantitative informa-tion about the amount of metals bound. YEAST BP2-0-A AND ITS METAL BINDING PROPERTIES Chelsea Painter (Ryan Van Wagoner, Chris Ireland) Department of Medicinal Chemistry University of Utah honors college Chelsea Painter Ryan Van Wagoner Chris Ireland |