MSU researcher uses grant to study little-known but
largely useful microbes
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by Michael Becker, MSU News Service
July 18, 2008
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Montana State University
microbiologist Matthew Fields spends his days trying to understand
how interactions on a microscopic scale could change how we think
of energy production, climate change and even soil contamination.
Fields studies the physiology and
behavior of microbes - the tiny organisms that have inhabited
virtually every square inch of the earth's surface for the past
3.5 billion years.
"Microbes have global impacts," Fields
said. "They can grow fast and in large numbers, and there is always
power in numbers." |
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Microbiology
graduate students Kara DeLeon, left, and Kristen Brileya prepare
soil samples in Matthew Fields' laboratory for transport to a
research site. (MSU Photo by Kelly Gorham) |
Fields is particularly interested in how that power can be harnessed for
human use. Last year, he received a five-year $1.65 million grant from
the Department of Energy to study how microbes living together interact.
The grant is part of the Virtual Institute for Microbial Stress and
Survival, a project led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Fields' work involves researchers at MSU and five other universities
across the country, as well as scientists at three national
laboratories.
Fields, who works at MSU's Center for Biofilm Engineering, said people
are generally only aware of the microbes that make humans sick, such as
E. coli. But those notorious species represent only a drop in earth's
microbial ocean.
"Life on this planet is microbial," he said. "There is a vast amount
going on in the microbial world that we don't understand. Microbes play
significant roles in the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the
phosphorous cycle, and we don't fully understand how."
Part of the reason microbes remain mysterious is the way they have
traditionally been studied in the lab, Fields said. Researchers usually
grow cultures of single microbe species and then explore how those
monocultures react to different stimuli.
"But monocultures in the lab are not like the real world," Fields said.
"Seldom do organisms grow on their own in a real ecosystem."
Instead, Fields looks at the complex systems and communities microbes
form naturally. The goal, he said, is not necessarily to understand
which single variable produces a certain reaction. Rather, the goal is
to understand the key mechanisms that drive the entire system.
Fields uses this system-based approach to study how the microbial
communities living at sites contaminated by toxic heavy metals, such as
uranium and chromium, may help stop the spread of those contaminants.
Some forms of those heavy metals are soluble in water, allowing them to
seep into groundwater and spread beyond the contaminated site.
But Fields explained that some of the microbes he studies can, just by
going through their natural life processes, make those metals insoluble.
Instead of spreading, the metals are deposited in solid form at the
contamination site.
"We're not getting rid of it, but we are treating and containing it so
that it doesn't make people sick," Fields said.
Right now, a number of complications make this process hard to
understand in real world terms, Fields said. Chief among those
complications is the fact that microbes behave differently in biofilms -
the complex, multi-species communities they tend to form in the real
world - than they do when isolated. This means that any remediation
solution involving microbes would have to be studied carefully and
tailored to suit a specific site.
But Fields believes that, despite the complexity, microbial solutions
will be cheaper and more efficient than traditional methods for
remediating sites, which include chemically treating and physically
removing the contaminated soil.
Fields hopes that this research will go a long ways toward showing
people that microbes have much to offer.
"This is a microbial world," Fields said.
"They're the most evolved creatures on the planet, and we have a lot to
learn about them."
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Learn more about
Physiology and Ecology Research at Montana State University's Center
for Biofilm Engineering.
Contact: Matthew Fields, (406) 994-7340 or
matthew.fields(AT)biofilm.montana.edu
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