Harnessing the power of soda lake microbial mats for CO2 capture and conversion

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Soda lakes are among the most alkaline aquatic environments on earth and among the most productive ecosystems known. High pH, high salinity, and extensive free radical activity lead to extreme conditions for survival of aquatic life. At the same time, a virtually endless supply of bicarbonate enables active photosynthesis by microbial mats - complex multi-layered microbial communities similar to ancient stromatolites or thrombolites. Soda lakes are distributed all over the world and Canada is home to some of those. Recently, my team compared microbial mats from Canadian soda lakes - Cariboo Pateau, BC - to Asian soda lakes on the Kulunda steppe, Mongolia. Metagenomics analyses showed that these distant ecosystems share a common ecological blueprint, a similar microbial community. Apparently, nature has come up with a single solution for this ecosystem a community structure that is both productive and robust in an extreme and dynamic environment. My aim is to use that blueprint to realize a technically and economically feasible bio-process, powered by the sun, for direct-air-capture and conversion of CO2 into bio-energy. This year, we have been able to take the research to pilot-scale. The installation features >300 m of transparent pipes and a total volume of almost 1,000 L. It was seeded with the Canadian soda lake microbiome and operated successfully for 140 days in the Alberta outdoor environment, demonstrating both robustness and productivity. Making use of natural processes occurring in soda lake sediments, my team discovered how to bio-refine the produced biomass into methane and phyocyanin, a valuable natural product. These positive results have propelled the program into a critical stage, with a spin off company, Synergia Biotech, incorporated recently. It was selected into the Creative Destruction Lab, a Canada-wide program that provides business mentorship and access to investors. Scale up and commercialization are becoming a real possibility. My Discovery Program supports this development by addressing the fundamental ecology of the system with cutting edge -omics approaches: (i) how do the microbes performing photosynthesis cope with predation by protists and viruses? (ii) do they depend on known defenses such as CRISPR-Cas systems? (iii) do they diversify to escape predation? (iv) how much carbon is lost by interactions between phototrophs and heterotrophs? (v) Can Loki-archaea, enigmatic microbes abundant in soda lake sediments, be used to further improve bio-refining? This research will answer fundamental questions on robustness and productivity in microbial ecology. It supports development of technology for mitigating CO2 emissions and production of a high-value natural product, directly contributing to Canada's green energy portfolio and economy.