K.C. Donnelly Externship - Promotion of Translational/Transdisciplinary Efforts in Graduate and Post-Doctoral Research

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Project Description-(Abstract) Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a serious concern due to extensive contamination in environment. As compared with other contaminants, PFAS are persistent, bioaccumulative and resistant to degradation. Therefore, effective clean-up of PFAS is urgently needed. Using plants to extract PFAS from soils through phytoremediation may be a practical approach. Our previous studies have investigated uptake of PFAS by hemp plants from soil, but this strategy is mostly limited to the removal of short-chain fluorinated molecules. Our existing R01 project investigates phytoremediation enhancement with novel materials such as ultra-mesoporous silica nanoparticles (UMNs) and carbon dots (CDs). Tuning the surface chemistry of these nanomaterials will enhance uptake of PFAS by plants and luminescent carbon dots will enable real time tracking of these materials in plants. Still, the disposal of PFAS contaminated biomass remains a challenge. Biodegradation of PFAS by microbes is a promising technology. It is a sustainable, green process that requires low capital and maintenance costs. Our preliminary studies achieved >70% degradation of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) from PFAS contaminated hemp biomass following a reductive defluorination method using A6 microbes. Here, we propose to further investigate the microbial degradation of PFAS in contaminated hemp plants via a reductive defluorination method using a novel Acidimicrobiaceae sp. strain A6 and to assess the effect of nanomaterials on the PFAS degradation. 1