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Marine Microbes Emerge As Fertile Research Field

Posted on: Monday, 8 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. - In one gulp of seawater, a swimmer swallows a menagerie of microbes, as diverse a collection as found anywhere in nature.

This teeming world of invisible creatures, overlooked by much of the environmental movement, has an important new advocate.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is spending big money to stalk the tiny microbes, confident that the watery wilderness contains clues to the workings of larger life on Earth - establishing the foundation as a lead source of funding for research in this emerging field.

Life evolved from oceans, and marine microbes are thought to be essential to the planet's carbon and oxygen balance, said David Kingsbury, who directs the new research initiative. Microbes could someday be used to monitor the health of the ocean, or yield new medicines or fuel sources.

About $9 million is supporting work by Craig Venter, the geneticist who gained fame by racing the federal government to the finish line of the Human Genome Project.

A surfer and sailor, Venter is identifying the precise order of genes in 84 marine microbes, many of them collected aboard his yacht- based laboratory in waters ranging from the northwestern Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea.

Another $9 million is being spent to fund renowned oceanographers Sally Chisholm and David Karl of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Hawaii, respectively, specialists in the anatomy, behavior and ecological niches of marine microbes.

Their goal is to learn what these microbes do - and how and why they do it. Only one-tenth the diameter of human hair, marine microbes are less riveting than giant whales or cute seals - so microbe research has been largely ignored.

"There is a huge reservoir of unknown stuff," said Karl, who gathered with Venter, Chisholm and other researchers in San Francisco in July.

The scientists met to decide which microbes are worthy of further attention, in a scientific version of "American Idol." The Moore Foundation aims to sequence 130 microbes. Creatures that hail from unusual places - of great depth or extreme temperatures - are of special interest. So are microbes that are specialists, or those physiologically equipped to do unique things.

"We seek to characterize them from all over the world, to better understand their unique properties," said Karl.

Even though oceans cover about three-quarters of Earth, the world of marine microbes is less explored than the deepest and densest regions of the Amazon. What's known is that these one-celled creatures are critically important to the health of the planet, because they harness sunlight and atmospheric gases to build a foundation for life.

Kingsbury calls them "little engines of geochemical change."

"This research allows us to study the biochemistry that is embedded in marine bacteria, so important to the health of the Earth," he said.

All manner of weird and wonderful things live underwater, the scientists said. One variety dines on concrete, ingesting things like sewer pipes. Another likes rocks, with a preference for basalt. Others thrive in airless sediments, hydrothermal vents or saline, landlocked seas.

How do they do that? That's what the scientists hope to learn.

Why would a Hawaiian-based microbe need 1,700 genes to do its job of converting sunlight into carbon dioxide - more than it could possibly use? Perhaps it is able to turn genes on or off if the ocean climate abruptly shifts.

Sudden genetic changes could be a tip-off to climate changes, the scientists said.

Source: Sunday Gazette - Mail; Charleston, W.V.

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