Bacterial slime is cunning stuff. More technically known as biofilm, it is a collaborative joint venture between large numbers of bacteria that consort together, forming multicultural communities on any surface, including underwater surfaces.
Biosignal's compounds will be tested against organisms known to cause corrosion problems.
Biofilms also extrude sticky, slimy mucous polymers that provide them with structured and protected habitats, and keep out dangerous substances like antibacterial products.
While bacteria are not big thinkers or talkers, they are capable of a process called quorum sensing that allows them to communicate chemically – what's more, they communicate and cooperate so well that their slime colonies develop interesting characteristics. In the case of biofilms that corrode oil and gas pipelines, the bacteria that need to access dissolved oxygen live on top and provide a handy barrier to protect the bacteria that find oxygen toxic. This allows them to grow and produce agents able to eat through steel.
The corrosive capacity is a result of the presence in slime colonies of acid-producing bacteria (APB) that turn dissolved oxygen into weak organic acids, and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) that consume the weak organic acid, combine it with sulfates from oil and water and produce hydrogen sulfide that corrodes steel and other metals. This process costs the oil and gas industry hundreds of millions of dollars per annum in chemicals and production down time. (Source: Biosignal)
Despite the fact that bacteria are sometimes a diverse crowd of species, the cunning thing about quorum sensing and slime formation is that it is controlled by bacterial signalling using a common currency, a small collection of chemicals that all of the slime bacteria are capable of producing.
Human vs Slime
To date most human attempts to kill or eradicate slime from underwater surfaces, such as oil and gas industry infrastructure, have involved the use of traditional biocides, such as glutaraldehyde, acrolein and, more recently, tetrakis hydroxymethyl phosphonium sulfate (THPS).
Pipeline cleaning also involves the use of rubber and wire brush pigs that work a bit like a bottlebrush scrubbing the sides as they push through the pipes.
Despite oil and gas companies spending money and time on these strategies, biofilm quickly regrows, contributing to the need for replacement parts and representing a serious ongoing expense.
A new approach to slime control
The history of science is littered with folklore surrounding great inventions and the story behind the discovery of Biosignal's novel anti-biofilm product is made of the right kind of elements.
University of New South Wales Professor Peter Steinberg, now an executive director of Biosignal, was scuba diving with a group of students collecting marine life samples in the waters of Botany Bay, when they noticed that most of the seaweed was covered with algae and other biological fouling, all except for one species. Intrigued, they plucked a sample of the rogue seaweed and took it back to the lab.
It turns out that the seaweed, Delisea pulchra, produced molecules that had the ability to disrupt the bacterial signalling process.
By scrambling the chemical signalling of the bacteria trying to form colonies on its fronds, it put a halt to the biofilm formation process and other organisms therefore had nothing to get a grip on.
The seaweed's secret involves the presence in its tissue of chemicals that are antagonistic to the bacterial signalling process. One of the key signalling systems is called the AHL system. The UNSW team has since proceeded to synthesise and evaluate more than 300 variations of Delisea's natural blockers of the AHL system.
The corporate vehicle
In 1999 the University of NSW formed a spin-out company called Biosignal to commercialise the AHL-A intellectual property.
Biosignal listed on the ASX in 2004 and made its first project the commercialisation of the anti-biofilm technology for reducing the build-up of bacteria on contact lenses and medical devices that cause millions of infections. The technology is applicable wherever bacteria cause problems, including human health settings.
Biosignal has also signed a collaborative agreement with a privately held Melbourne-based company called Q.Stat to develop new solutions to the hydrocarbon fuel contamination and oil and gas infrastructure degradation caused by biofilms.
This collaboration now has data from a four-month study by the CSIRO Division of Manufacturing and Infrastructure evaluating the activity of a range of candidates from Biosignal's library against bacteria and fungi causing metal corrosion. This study used aluminium metal coupons and it confirmed and quantified experiments conducted at the University of Connecticut using steel coupons.
BHP Billiton and Santos have also come on board offering funding for the continuation of this project.
Biosignal chief executive Michael Ordesson is enthusiastic about the potential of Biosignal's technology to contribute to the field. It is showing potential to be able to significantly reduce the use of more toxic antibacterial products by making biofilms more permeable and reducing their ability to reform after pigging.
Ordesson said Biosignal's initial objective is to significantly reduce current levels of biocides used in oil and gas pipelines and also reduce the frequency of required cleaning leading to further savings.
"On top of that we aim to achieve savings as a result of reductions in the rate of degradation of parts and equipment and reduced environmental and occupational health and safety risks," he said.
The fact that Biosignal's technology is based on an effective natural model has caught the eye of a major Japanese institutional investor.
Biosignal announced earlier this year that the Restoration Group, founded by Japanese real estate tyc-oon Yasuhiro Sakakibara, had become a significant shareholder. The Japanese group now holds between 11% and 12% of its scrip, making it the second largest shareholder after UNSW, which has approximately a 20% stake.
Ordesson said a major upside of the Restoration Group's investment was that the company was actively working with the Biosignal team, helping to organise a corporate roadshow of Japan in late November and arranging meetings with large Japanese corporations.
With revenue already coming in from grants and commercial collaborations, its contact lenses are expected to be on the market by 2008. Ordesson said Biosignal was considering spinning out the oil and gas industry applications into its own company.
"If the results that we get from the corrosion trials underway over the next few months are as good as the results we have had to date, products could be on the market within the next few years."
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