AMI members show the way on how microbes are already solving environmental disasters

Applied Microbiology International members are among a team of high level microbiologists who have teamed up to highlight how the world’s tiniest creatures are delivering solutions to climate change and pollution.

The paper, ‘Microbes can capture carbon and degrade plastic — why aren’t we using them more?’ published in Nature, is the result of a scientific advisory group on climate change organised by the American Society of Microbiology and the International Union of Microbiological Societies.

The group included AMI members Raquel Peixoto, Jay Lennon and Lisa Y Stein.

Sustainable solutions

A series of meetings looked at whether certain microbe-based technologies that are already on the market could contribute to sustainable solutions that are scalable, ethical and economically viable, and identified cases in which the technical feasibility of an approach has already been demonstrated and in which solutions could become competitive with today’s fossil-based approaches in 5–15 years.

For example, the paper highlights LanzaTech, a carbon-upcycling company in Skokie, Illinois, which is working on producing aviation fuel on a commercial scale from the ethanol produced when microbes metabolize industrial waste gases or sugar cane. 

Meanwhile, the firm NatureWorks in Minnesota is producing polymers, fibres and bioplastics using the microbial fermentation of feedstocks, such as cassava, sugar cane and beets.

Clean-up efforts

The paper also outlines how microbes are also being used for bioremediation - for example, Carbios in France, has developed a modified bacterial enzyme that breaks down and recycles polyethylene terephthalate (PET), one of the most common single-use plastics. 

Oil Spill Eater International in Dallas, Texas uses microbes to clean up oil spills, while the company Floating Island International in Montana is building artificial floating islands on lakes and reservoirs that have been polluted by excessive nutrient run-off, so that methane-metabolizing microbes can colonize the underside of the islands to remove methane originating from lake sediments, transforming inland lakes and reservoirs into carbon sinks.

Greener food chains

The paper also looks at how microbes can be used to make food production less reliant on chemical fertilizers. For example, Many bacteria and archaea can be used to produce nitrogen fertilizer with much lower greenhouse-gas emissions than synthetic fertilizers. Several companies are selling biofertilizers, which are formulations containing bacteria or other microbes that can increase the availability of nutrients to plants. 

Microbial biopesticides are also offering food producers a way to control crop pests without harming human or animal health or releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

‘Microbes can capture carbon and degrade plastic — why aren’t we using them more?’ is published in Nature.