Biotechnologist

Imagine you are bustling around a bright white lab, shuttling closed Petri dishes back and forth between your bench and a large industrial freezer. Normally this freezer is used to preserve specimens, but you are using it to incubate them. You are a biotechnologist developing a new strain of oil-eating bacteria that can be used to clean up oil spills in Canada's Arctic. The Arctic is one of Earth's most sensitive ecosystems, but it also lies on top of oil reserves that are increasingly tapped to feed our dependence on fossil fuels.

Even the most minor spill could have devastating repercussions on the Arctic environment, not only from the spill itself, but from the influx of humans, their vehicles, and their waste as they flock to the site to clean it up. That is why you have been working so hard to find a biological solution, one that would have less of an impact on the Arctic's delicately balanced ecosystem. Your research as a biotechnologist begins with bacteria strains used to clean up oil spills in other parts of the world, including on water. These oil-eating bacteria have proven very successful elsewhere, but they simply could not compete in the Arctic's devastatingly cold temperatures, creating a problem you are determined to overcome. You have been crossing strains of bacteria that have already adapted to life at sub-zero temperatures with strains of oil-eaters. After months of experimentation, you have identified several strains that use oil as their food source and actually colonize and grow on their Petri dishes when incubated in the freezer.

Now that you have gotten the bacteria to grow, however, you still need to determine if introducing these new strains into the Arctic will have a negative impact on the environment. You must make sure these bacterial colonies will flourish on the oil spill, but die once the spill is cleaned up. This problem will be answered through a series of simulation trials, as well as trials in situ, where the bacteria will be put to the test on real Arctic tundra under real Arctic conditions. You hope that your new strains will be up for the test, but you also hope they will never be needed.