Gowanus The Healer

How’s this for a silvery lining on the white film:

The murky waters of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal have caused the demise of a baby whale dubbed Sludgie, stunk up an entire neighborhood and even once caught on fire.

Someday, they may also save your life.

At least that’s what a pair of New York biology professors believe after doing research on the waterway considered by many to be the most polluted, putrid and repugnant place in the city.

New York City College of Technology Profs. Nasreen and Niloufar Haque say the key to combating heart disease, Alzheimer’s and even the AIDS virus may exist in a white film full of bacteria in the canal.

“One of the things we found is that it has a very potential effect as an antibiotic,” Nasreen Haque said Wednesday.

The Haque sisters began researching the Gowanus three years ago equipped with a team of elite divers willing to plumb the depths of the canal — and a hypothesis.

“If organisms can survive in such an area, they must be producing something that protects them,” Nasreen Haque said.

The divers pulled samples of the white gunk, which is a combination of bacteria, microbes and other chemicals, from under the canal bed. The Haques took the samples to a lab.

“What we suspected turned out to be true,” Nasreen Haque said. “Extracts from the microbes in the water proved to be potential sources of antibiotics or inhibitors.”

. . .

Haque said she and her sister found secretions from microorganisms — “some of which operate like antiobiotics” — in the white gunk.

The Haques are testing some of the agents to see if they are able to fight the type of bacteria that leads to staph infections.

Nasreen Haque hopes the substances could be used in anti-inflammatory drugs capable of battling heart disease, among other serious disorders.

Location Scout: Gowanus Canal.