Lurking in the recesses of your backyard lies a thriving, unknown world of microbes invisible to the naked eye.
Examine just three milliliters of soil under a microscope, and you’ll most likely encounter oval bacteria with thousands of hair-like strands dotting their surfaces, tiny globular amoebas with protruding bulges for arms or seemingly benign viruses with diamond-shaped heads and pencil-straight tails.
Despite their size, microbes saturate our everyday life in a big way. Without these microorganisms ‘mdash; which, among other things, help ferment bread and cheese, treat common colds and serve as biofuel ‘mdash; the world would be less than lively.
All that, when over 99 percent of all microbial species have yet to be scientifically classified.
Recognizing the potential of microbes to treat cancer and other diseases, biodiversity conservation organization Pro-Natura USA, UCSD’s science student outreach program BioBridge and biotech companies BioAtla and Life Technologies formed the nonprofit MicroLife Discovery Center last year.
The center strives to inspire high-school students to take an interest in modern science by putting them to work in the biotechnology lab and giving them the job of uncovering new microbial species.
‘[The center’s program is] based on BioBlitz, which brings together scientists and the general public to do a snapshot of biodiversity in a certain region, normally under a 24-hour period, looking at flora and fauna,’ said Martyn Collins, MicroLife Discovery Center executive director and Pro-Natura Americas CEO. ‘However, it would be a very rare event for a BioBlitz [students] like that to discover new species, with the exception of microbial organisms. So, the idea is to take students on hunts of microbes.’
Finding these microbes are the central mission of the center’s new program, MicroBlitz. As in BioBlitz, high-school students will pair up in groups and collect samples of soil, water and macroorganisms ‘mdash; dead insects and plants ‘mdash; that they hypothesize will contain microbes.
‘I feel that there was an excellent chanc
e that I helped discover new organisms,’ Castle Park High School freshman Jason Wall said. ‘I’m sure that I discovered at least 50 [new species] on my MicroBlitz search. We found some really strange places to take samples. I tried to look for places with water, some kind of vegetation, soil, and the water was not stagnant, but moving kind of slowly.’
Samples can be collected from virtually anywhere, including the school playground or a nearby pond.
‘[MicroBlitz is] very simple,’ Castle Park High School teacher Dari Kimball said. ‘It’s easy to educate those participating in a collection to do it properly: how to keep samples sterile so that you aren’t contaminating the sample with foreign bacteria that may not be collected. And you can do it within half an hour or less.’
After students return to the lab, they must perform a few key tests to ensure the quality of the sample, such as recording pH, measuring temperature and noting the geographic location of the original sample. Once their specimens have been collected and labeled, they are stored for analysis to determine whether a new microbe was discovered.
‘Although local students will be able to visit the center, that’s not the primary function,’ Collins said. ‘It’s there to provide analytical services of finding out what’s in their sample and giving it back to students. Students may be involved in some of the data processing from the work that’s been done [in the lab].’
In addition, the center hopes to launch a media network online, so that students can learn more about lab techniques such as DNA recombination and gene sequencing.
With the help of BioBridge, UCSD students and high-school students might be able to perform the lab tests on their own samples in the future ‘mdash; currently not possible due to the high cost of materials and knowledgeable staff. However, UCSD students do have the opportunity to help implement MicroBlitz in high schools.
‘[For] undergrad students, there’s a lot of opportunity to be liaisons within the classroom: the training process and working with the teachers, putting together media and the Web site, helping with special events to engage students, consultations on advertising,’ BioBridge Director Jeremy Babendure said.
According to Babendure, students who discover a new species of microbe may also get the opportunity to name the species. Although there are naming guidelines to keep microboes classfied in an orderly, scientific fashion, students would have the option of naming their microbe after themselves.
‘There might be a naming system, where they might be the name of the school and the name of student, or something like that,’ Babendure said. ‘You want to get [students] a sense of ownership. They might be able to brag about: ‘I got to name an organism.”
Because it is still in the pilot phase, the MicroBlitz center is only available to high schools within the Sweetwater Union High School District. However, based on the positive reactions and inquiries from neighboring schools, MicroBlitz hopes to expand nationwide.
‘[MicroBlitz] is not a one-hit wonder,’ Kimball said. ‘It’s something that can be spread out throughout the entire year [in the biology curriculum], and you can bring it back so the students can really remember their experiences. We can start with the process of samples and gene sequencing and spread it throughout the entire year.’
Readers can contact Jasmine Ta at [email protected].