"This represents an important example of how the production sequencing capacity developed by the Department of Energy at the JGI for the human genome program can provide fundamental insights into vital environmental problems," said JGI Director Eddy Rubin.
Understanding the biofilm ecosystem also may be relevant to the search for life on Mars, since it's conceivable that the iron and sulfur-rich surface of Mars could harbor microbes that eat iron, similar to those in iron and sulfur-rich pyrite mines like the Richmond Mine.
For the past nine years, Banfield has been studying a pink microbial biofilm that sits like scum on the surface of green pools of water, as acidic as battery acid, in the dark depths of the Richmond Mine, located nine miles northwest of Redding. Her goal is to understand how the extremophiles - microbes that live in extreme environments - live together and generate the acid drainage that makes such mines toxic hazards. The green runoff from the mine, captured and treated by the Environmental Protection Agency, is not only acidic, but also contains high levels of toxic metals - zinc, iron, copper and arsenic - and is a piping 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
In this low-light, low-oxygen, high-acid and toxic environment about 1,400 feet into the mountain, the microbes thrive. They fix carbon and nitrogen from the carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the air, eat iron by oxidizing it with oxygen, and in the process dissolve the iron pyrite (iron sulfide, also known as fool's gold) to create sulfuric acid.
Previously, researchers have studied microbial communities, such as those in hot springs or in the ocean, either by isolating individual organisms or strains, culturing them and sequencing the cultured population; or by plucking bits and pieces of genes from the various membe
'"/>
Contact: Robert Sanders
rls@pa.urel.berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
1-Feb-2004