One of the things most important to us when we go to swim in our blue sea
is to know that are sea is clean
and it interests any country with a seaside
This is why the French company, Veolia Environment, decided to invest
1 Million euro in Israeli research
in the Israeli marine science school of all places
This is how the school's scientists beat their collegues
in other distinguished faculties that compitted over this research grant
Monitoring sea contamination is problematic
mainly due to the amount of time it takes for a test
to reach descision makers that need to decide
whether to close or keep open a recreational beach
and this initiated this research
It turns out that to this day, the test for seawater quality
takes 36 ours till final results
and it may be that we bath in contaminated water
for few days without knowing
So lets watch how the academy and the jewish mind
found a solution for this problem
I summoned to this research two honorary students
It was Yaeli Etstein and Itay Kilovaty
and they started working with me and
develop these methods
when I got here, to the school for marine sciences
it was like all my dreams came true
Working underwater....its
what you sea in National Geographic
suddenly the world of wind surfing opened up for me
and wave surfing that completely in captured me
it's my world
So how does it work?
It resembles a forensic procedure
The research goal was to develop a working procedure,
based on a molecular biology technique
that was not applied to the field of marine monitoring
not to count bacteria itself but its DNA
The criminals in this case are coli bacteria
needed to be caught quickly and in the act
I arrive at the beach with the sampling bottles
in a cooling container
I go out to the sampling point, where water is waist height
about meter deep
positioning the bottle at an angle of 45 degrees
filling it to the end with no air bubbles
close it underwater
and move on to the next sampling point
The bottles are taken back to the laboratory
and the sampled water are filtered with special membranes
that we found for the procedure
The third step is DNA extraction
We upgraded it in several ways
to get highly purified DNA
clean from many substances found in seawater
The fourth step is analysis with real time PCR of the DNA
The number gives indication for the magnitude
of fecal bacteria we looked for in the seawater sample
we just brought in
The formula of the genes we found is unique
and a patent was written about it
The testing time is uncomparable, 10 times faster than the existing method
It's three hour vs. 36 hours
The novelty of the complete protocol
relates to the main technique in it
to the unique design we did for new systems
that did not appear in the scientific literature before
that we discovered
This research has earned the school's Lab
advanced equipment that cannot be found at many academic research facilities
This is an instrument that can be found only in forensic laboratories
and it helps advancing other research projects done at the school.
There are a lot of university research projects that are done here
mainly because we have running water facilities
an asset that does not exist at any university
as for Yaeli, she doesn't rest for a second
she currently decided to take her scientific background
and connect it with sustainability
but the academic future is still ahead, once she decides to get back to it
I've decided to put my energy into earlier stages of the consumption chain
You can invent a new cure for cancer
or you can prevent it
I promote a social enterprise called Critical Mass
aimed to promote domestic sustainability,
mainly the subject of toxic chemicals in consumer goods
you just need to know to buy this instead of that
Professor Adam Friedmann has big inspirations too
What you saw here is just the beginning
In this school you don't just study the sea
You help protecting it
