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Engineering bacteria to clean-up oil spills is rapidly advancing but faces regulatory hurdles and environmental concerns. Here, we develop a new technology to harness indigenous soil microbial communities for bioremediation by flooding local populations with catabolic genes for petroleum hydrocarbon degradation. Overexpressing three enzymes (almA, xylE, p450cam) in  Escherichia coli  led to degradation of 60–99% of target hydrocarbon substrates. Mating experiments, fluorescence microscopy and TEM revealed indigenous bacteria could obtain these vectors from  E. coli  through several mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), including conjugation and cytoplasmic exchange through nanotubes. Inoculating petroleum-polluted sediments with  E. coli  carrying the vector pSF-OXB15-p450camfusion showed that the  E. coli  cells died after five days but a variety of bacteria received and carried the vector for over 60 days after inoculation. Within 60 days, the total petroleum hydrocarbon content of the polluted soil was reduced by 46%. Pilot experiments show that vectors only persist in indigenous populations when under selection pressure, disappearing when this carbon source is removed. This approach to remediation could prime indigenous bacteria for degrading pollutants while providing minimal ecosystem disturbance.

Horizontal ‘gene drives’ harness indigenous bacteria for bioremediation