In the spirit of the day…

Despite the fact that I really don’t celebrate VD (Valentine’s Day, in case you were thinking something else), I thought I would show a little love, share a warm-fuzzy, and re-post this from Suzanne Kennedy (clearly, a woman after my own heart) at the MoBio Blog,  The Culture Dish.

Oh how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

Show some LOVE for Environmental Microbiology

Do you love your work? Does nothing make you happier than a day out in the field collecting soil from the rainforest floor, in a boat collecting Vibrio contaminated water from Puget Sound, traipsing the forest looking for animal droppings from wild birds in Venezuela, or aboard the Alvin collecting biofilms from deep sea floor hydrothermal vents?

It’s important to love your work and fortunately for us, there is so much to love about microbiology and the environment. But to find out what is best about working in this field, I asked the question to several of my scientist friends:  What do you love about your work? Why do you study environmental microbiology and what is it that makes it the best field of work?

And below are some of the best responses. Some are my own, but most are responses I received from people who study some of the most unusual samples from the most extreme environments in the world.  I think you will agree that environmental microbiology provides experiences unlike any other field. Let us know your reasons for loving your work!

14 Reasons to Love Environmental Microbiology:

1. You get to play outside in the mud, snow, water or clouds (see picture at end of article).

2. There is virtually an unlimited number of research projects to choose from. “Microbiologist William B. Whitman, estimates the number of bacteria in the world to be five million trillion trillion. That’s a five with 30 zeroes after it. Look at it this way. If each bacterium were a penny, the stack would reach a trillion light years.”

3. Your research will have an impact on everything living on the planet, humans, animals, and plants. Basically all the Kingdoms benefit from what you do.

4. You have the opportunity to visit exotic and remote locations.  

Graduate student Rick Davis explains, 

“I think I’ve been really lucky with the places I get to study– I got to go to Samoa, Hawaii, and Yellowstone this year!”

He also added reason number 5: 

5.  Environmental microbiologists are more laid back and generally more collaborative than competitive, which allows for greater progress and more fun at conferences!

John Mackay, a molecular biologist and director of business development at the plant diagnostic company, Linnaeus, tells me:

6. You can cruise around the seas for months, sequence a bit of sea water and write the whole lot off on your research grant!

7. You can work on things you can eat or drink – I recommend wine and truffles!

8. When you find new species (almost a given!), you can name them after yourself.

 New discoveries are also what motivates Charlie Lee from the University of Waikato, a Postdoctoral researcher in microbial ecology studying the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. He echoes the sentiment that discovery is almost a guarantee:

9. Most systems we look at are relatively poorly understood, and it’s always exciting to discover something for the first time.

 Tom Niederberger, a Postdoctoral researcher in marine biosciences at the University of Delaware, has more to add:

10. The international travel is a great reward. The world is your playground as microbes have colonized basically all habitats on earth, and it’s great to travel around sampling not only the microbes, but new cultures/food/travel etc. and not being chained to the lab and pipette. Also the international collaborations and conferences also are great.

11. But I think what is most important is that microbes in the environment are essential not only for the health of the planet (e.g. global nutrient cycling / global climate change) but they are also intimately linked to the healthy functioning of our bodies. i.e. the are really important!

12. Also,there is the excitement of the unknown. Most of the organisms cannot be cultured and we know nothing about them…I think this is great motivation and it will keep you busy, and there are always new problems to solve and new questions to ask.

All excellent points!

And from a molecular biologist from Colorado State University (who wished to remain anonymous) come two excellent points I hadn’t considered:

13. Extremists don’t kidnap environmental microbiologists. Actually, they give them back.
 
14. If you get tenure, who’s going to boot you out?  Exxon?

Did I mention that environmental microbiologists are funny?

Microbes Make it Snow

The recent snow and ice, and deeper snow, and even more ice, across much of the U.S. over the past few weeks have finally inspired me to put together my first post for the new year.  You’re probably wondering how on earth microbes have anything to do with the 3 feet of snow you had to dig your car out from under last week…  

…but hear me out.

Blowing in the wind

I have two “believe it or not” statements for today: First, believe it or not, microbes are ubiquitous in the Earth’s atmosphere (Bowers et al. 2009, and others).  “Ubiquitous” is a fantastic word that simply means “absolutely everywhere” and it’s especially true with microbes.  As a soil microbiologist, I immediately think of soils and sediments all over the globe and the wide array of fungi and bacteria that keep the planet green (and purple and red and brown), and it makes sense because there are so many things to eat in soils.  There’s a never-ending supply of nutrients from dead and decaying plants, worms, insects, other microbes, and even weathering rocks.  But I also know that out in the open ocean microbes are abundant and provide the foundation for the food chain, not to mention nutrient cycling and overall marine ecosystem health.  We’ve known these things for quite some time now (hence, my “microbe-centric” view of life). 

What doesn’t always make sense to a terrestrial biologist is that microbes are also extremely abundant in the air around us, above and beyond our reach, floating in the breeze and being carried thousands of miles on trans-oceanic trade winds.   It’s true, though, and for years we assumed that these microbes must be in a sort of hibernation mode, because there’s nothing to eat, harsh conditions often including extreme dryness, cold temperatures and powerful UV radiation from the sun.  More recently, however,  we’ve begun to understand that only a portion of these airborne microbes are hibernating, while others remain active, usually bound in soil particles or cloud droplets (Sattler et al. 2001).  And as long as these little guys are metabolically active, they have the potential to make changes to their environment, even in the atmosphere.

Ice, Ice, Baby (sorry, I couldn’t help myself)

Which leads me to my second “believe it or not” statement for the day:  many of those atmospheric microbes have been found to nucleate ice (Bauer et al. 2003).  What I mean by “nucleate ice” is that they can serve as the starting point for ice crystals to begin to form.   What makes this really cool (pardon the pun) is that ice-nucleating microbes have been found to make specific proteins on the surface of their cells which catalyze the formation of ice crystals at relatively high temperatures.  This action not only allows the crystals to form outside the microbe, rather than inside where ice crystals would damage cellular membranes and kill the microbe, but the formation of these crystals also releases very small amounts of heat energy, keeping the microbe that much safer from freezing. 

Commercially available snow-seeder.

You might have heard about these guys (indirectly) before if you’ve ever heard of “cloud seeding.”  There’s a commercially available freeze-dried preparation of ice-nucleating bacteria that many ski resorts will shoot up into the clouds to help encourage snowfall.  A slightly less well-known practice is the application of “ice-minus” bacteria to reduce crop loss due to frost.  In that case, growers have taken advantage of specific mutant bacteria which lack the genes for the ice-nucleating protein and spray these bacteria across the foliar surfaces so that ice won’t form as easily.  The idea here is that ice-nucleating bacteria are very commonly found on plant surfaces, and can lead to frost damage.  But those lacking the gene (called “ice-minus”) when applied to the plants, outcompete the natural bacteria, and reduce the formation of frost on plant surfaces.   

Atmospheric Microbes = Snow

Bacteria and snowflakes.

But these ice-nucleating bacteria exist all over the world, in the soil and in the air around us and may be affecting more than just the ski slopes and strawberries.  A very interesting study by a group of scientists out at the University of Colorado in Boulder recently looked specifically at ice-nucleating bacteria and how microbial abundances in the atmosphere may alter atmospheric conditions (Bowers, et al 2009).   In order to address this question, they took a number of air samples from the Storm Peak Laboratory at the top of Mt. Werner near Steamboat Springs, CO.  Their air samples contained over 640 different bacterial species (via genetic sequence), but their data indicated they did not even begin to sample the full diversity of the airborne microbial community.  Despite variable weather conditions during sampling, the total airborne microbial numbers remained stable and didn’t change throughout the sampling period.  However, with increasing relative humidity, there was a significant increase in ice-nucleating bacteria.  They found that the abundance of ice-nucleating bacteria was significantly greater in cloudy air samples, than in clear (or non-cloudy) air samples.  They even suggested that some bacteria may be able to respond to favorable (humid and cloudy) conditions and adjust their concentrations of ice-nucleating proteins, consequently increasing the ice-nucleation potential of these species.

Take-home message…

So, what does all this have to do with the massive downfall of snow and ice this season?  Well, as much as I love to blame global warming for more extreme weather events, we don’t have to connect a whole lot of dots to be able to believe that atmospheric microorganisms may be playing a role as well. 

The more people we have on the planet, the greater population densities become, and the more disturbance we cause to land surfaces, the more soil, dust, particulate matter, bacteria and fungi rise into the atmosphere and interact with our weather patterns.  Much the same way that cloud seeding works, it seems our activities down here are affecting the number of microbes and consequently cloud formation (bioprecipitation, if you will) up there.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bauer, H., Giebl, H., Hitzenberger, R., Kasper-Geibl, A., Reischl, G. Zibuschka, F., and H. Puxbaum. 2003.  Airborne bacteria as cloud condensation nuclei.  Journal of Geophysical Research, 108:4658.

Bowers, R., Lauber, C., Wiedinmyer, C., Hamady, M., Hallar, A., Fall, R., Knight, R., & Fierer, N. (2009). Characterization of Airborne Microbial Communities at a High-Elevation Site and Their Potential To Act as Atmospheric Ice Nuclei Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 75 (15): 5121-5130 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.00447-09

 

Griffin, D.W. 2004.  Terrestrial microorganisms at an altitude of 20,000 m in Earth’s atmosphere. Aerobiologia, 20:135-140.

Sattler, B., Puxbaum, H., and R. Psenner. 2001.  Bacterial growth in super-cooled cloud droplets.  Geophysical Research Letters, 28:239-242.