THE FATE AND TOXICITY OF BPA IN SWITCHGRASS (PANICUM VIRGATUM), A NATIVE PLANT, TO EXPLORE THE PHYTOREMEDIATION POTENTIAL

Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disrupting compound, leads to infertility, tumor growth, and obesity. As a common industrial polymer used in plastic production for decades, a tremendous quantity of products containing BPA are presently in landfills, leaching BPA into the surrounding environment. Testing BPA in hydrolysis and photolysis conditions showed its persistence. No statistically significantly hydrolysis (p = 0.42) or photolysis (p = 0.17) degradation was observed over 55days, establishing the need to find an environmentally safe, cost effective, and socially acceptable remediation system. Phytoremediation provides a sustainable in situ removal method, as opposed to traditional ex situ processes. During short exposure, Bush Blue Lake Bean showed promise, with a 31% removal over a 48hour period. Yet, in the long-term, the beans could not tolerate the BPA stress, resulting in severe phytotoxic symptoms. This established the need of using switchgrass a more tolerant, high biomass, fast growing, perennial native grass, which would sustain more environmental variation and tolerate BPA stress better under longer exposure. Using the highest environmentally relevant BPA concentration, the kinetics of removal with switchgrass was executed over an 84day period. The removal of BPA by switchgrass is highly encouraging, resulting in 55% BPA-removal from the aquatic media. The kinetics of the BPA removal experiment are currently being repeated to check the reproducibility. Data so far are highly promising, showing significant (p<0.0001) removal at day 46. After ELISA analysis of the plant tissue, it was discovered BPA is present in both the roots and shoots with a significantly (p=0.01) higher concentration in the roots. Ongoing experiments aim to explore the enzyme mediated defense mechanisms for BPA in the root and shoot tissues of switchgrass and the changes in the metabolomic profile of switchgrass root and shoot tissues as functions of BPA exposure.