Man's trash is a microbe's treasure: the diversity and metabolic potential of microorganisms in landfill solid and liquid waste

人类的活动导致了环境的广泛污染，从海洋中的石油羽流到遍布地球仪的垃圾填埋场。许多这些污染物可以通过环境中的微生物转化，将化合物转化为毒性较小或完全无害的物质。一旦确定，这些微生物活动可用于修复污染场地-但绝大多数微生物代谢潜力仍然没有描述。非营利组织Pure Earth将城市垃圾填埋场列为世界上最严重污染问题的第五名（www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/100），反映了垃圾填埋场复杂的污染物概况以及对环境和人类健康的潜在影响。垃圾填埋场内的微生物活动对于无机和有机废物的分解至关重要，但对所涉及的生物、途径和过程知之甚少。Laura Hug博士的研究项目旨在定义微生物多样性，并确定污染场地目前未知的代谢功能，特别关注垃圾填埋场。 为此，她的研究小组将对城市垃圾填埋场几个地点的微生物群落的总DNA和RNA进行测序，生成一个蓝图，其中存在哪些生物体，以及哪些途径是活跃的。为了开发新的生物修复工具，Hug博士的团队将通过富集培养来捕获感兴趣的活动，其中在实验室中维持不太复杂的微生物群落。通过元组学分析建立社区规模的代谢模型，并利用富集培养实验跟踪实验室中污染物降解的能力，将揭示微生物如何塑造其环境。拟议的研究有相当大的潜力发现可用于补救环境中毒素的微生物活动，有助于清理加拿大受污染的场地和淡水资源。这项工作将为加拿大各地的废物管理政策、补救要求和工业最佳做法提供信息。除了开发环境修复工具外，拟议的研究还探讨了生物学中的基本问题-生物如何适应污染场地的恶劣条件？降解人造产品的能力是如何以及何时进化的？微生物群落在哪些方面超过了它们各部分的总和，这些相互作用是否推动了全球循环？这项研究计划将扩大我们对生命之树的理解，同时开发解决方案，以解决人类活动对环境的影响。

Mankind's activities have lead to widespread contamination of the environment, from oil plumes in the oceans to landfills across the globe. Many of these contaminants can be transformed by microorganisms in the environment, which convert the compounds to less toxic or completely innocuous substances. Once identified, these microbial activities can be used to remediate contaminated sites – but the vast majority of microbial metabolic potential remains undescribed. The non-profit organization Pure Earth labeled municipal landfills #5 in the world's worst pollution problems (www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/100), reflecting landfills' complex contaminant profiles and potential impacts on both the environment and human health. Microbial activity within landfills is critical for decomposition of inorganic and organic wastes, but the organisms, pathways, and processes involved are poorly understood.***Dr. Laura Hug's research program seeks to define microbial diversity and identify currently unknown metabolic functions at contaminated sites, with a particular focus on landfills. To that end, her research group will sequence the total DNA and RNA of a microbial community from several locations in a municipal landfill, generating a blueprint of which organisms are present, and which pathways are active. To develop new bioremediation tools, Dr. Hug's team will capture activities of interest through enrichment culturing, where a less complex microbial community is maintained in the laboratory. The combination of community-scale metabolic modelling through meta-omic analyses and the ability to track contaminant degradation in the laboratory with enrichment culture experiments will uncover how microbes are shaping their environment. The proposed research has considerable potential to discover microbial activities that can be used to remediate toxins in the environment, helping to clean up Canadian contaminated sites and freshwater resources. This work will inform waste management policies, remediation requirements, and industrial best practices across Canada.***Beyond developing tools for environment remediation, the proposed research examines essential questions in biology – how do organisms adapt to the harsh conditions at contaminated sites? How and when did the ability to degrade man-made products evolve? In what ways are microbial communities more than the sum of their parts, and do these interactions drive global cycles? This research program will expand our understanding of the tree of life, while simultaneously developing solutions to address the impacts of human activities on the environment.**