Bioremedi-What?

It's not a really complicated word, but whenever I talk to people about what I did for my doctorate, I get all sorts of confused responses and a lot of "bio-rem…ediatory…what?" Basically, bioremediation is the process of remediating contaminated media (soil, water) using biology. Generally, it is done using microorganisms, but sometimes fungi or plants are used, and sometimes pure enzyme preparations can be applied. "Remediation" means to "remedy" an environment. Bioremediation has never really caught on as an answer to environmental problems because of the time it takes, despite often costing less than dig and dump solutions. As an application of biotechnology, bioremediation has proven somewhat useful in that many microorganisms are capable of degrading environmental contaminants and plants are adept at accumulating metals. However, the story gets less interesting there. There is limited application for GMOs, despite the potential to produce highly specialized microorganisms for remediation, because of public and regulatory resistance to their release into the environment.