Using microbial communities to assess environmental contamination
Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - 12:30
in Earth & Climate
First there were canaries in coal mines, now there are microbes at nuclear waste sites, oil spills and other contaminated environments. A multi-institutional team of more than 30 scientists has found that statistical analysis of DNA from natural microbial communities can be used to accurately identify environmental contaminants and serve as quantitative geochemical biosensors. This study was sponsored by ENIGMA, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science "Scientific Focus Area Program" based at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).