Exploring How Bacteria Thrive in the Great Salt Lake

November 25th, 2009

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The Great Salt Lake harbors tiny organisms that can survive in its extreme salty environment.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Extreme conditions at the Great Salt Lake put special pressures on the tiny, single-celled organisms that live there. The lake's high salt content limits the amount of oxygen in its water. When night falls, oxygen-generating photosynthesis stops, and the living creatures quickly use up what's left. To survive, bacteria and other microorganisms must change how they get their energy.

Understanding how the community of life responds to these varying conditions can help scientists use bacteria to clean up contamination, develop energy sources, protect our health and the health of our ecosystems. Researchers at EMSL will build a database of the proteins found in the lake's bacteria and archaea, another microbe found in extreme environments. Proteins are an organisms' toolkit, and Utah State University researchers will be able to use this information to monitor how the microbial community uses its toolkit to respond to changing conditions.

Utah State University is taking the lead in a partnership with the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL). EMSL is a U.S. Department of Energy national scientific user facility located at and managed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The three-year project, conducted by USU’s Center for Integrated BioSystems, is aimed at examining how the microbial community survives in the hostile environment of the Great Salt Lake.

Extreme conditions at the Great Salt Lake put special pressures on bacteria that live there. The Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, or nutrient cycles, are driven by microorganisms. The high salt content of the lake makes oxygen limited, meaning that once photosynthesis stops at night, the oxygen is quickly used up and bacteria have to change how they get their energy.

“Very few universities have the opportunity for conducting research at this level,” said Jacob Parnell, biologist at USU’s Center for Integrated BioSystems. “All life is driven by redox which is how bacteria breathe and obtain energy. Understanding how groups of organisms respond to these changing conditions is a fundamental issue that has implications for bioremediation, bio-energy, human health and ecosystem function.”

Researchers at EMSL will build a database of the proteins found in the lake’s bacteria and archaea, another microbe found in extreme environments. The information will be used by USU to monitor the changes in proteins as the microbial community responds to changes in oxygen.

“This collaborative research effort has the potential to help in the discovery of new proteins that carry out important metabolic processes evolved to function in salt-saturated environments,” said Stephen Callister, an EMSL scientist. “Of critical importance are understanding whether and how shifts in these processes, as a result of periodic environmental fluctuations in the GSL, affect the redox of pollutants.”

The research builds on current studies by USU, in collaboration with the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, to document what lives in the lake through genetic sequencing. The project will look at what these microbes are doing, and how they survive in extreme environments.

Other key researchers on the project include Giovanni Rompato from USU, along with microbiologist Bart Weimer at the University of California, Davis.

EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, is a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research program that is located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. EMSL offers an open, collaborative environment for scientific discovery to researchers around the world. EMSL’s technical experts and suite of custom and advanced instruments are unmatched. Its integrated computational and experimental capabilities enable researchers to realize fundamental scientific insights and create new technologies.

Provided by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory