2025: A Year of New Beginnings, Fun, and Scientific Adventures

To mark the end of 2024 and welcome the start of 2025, here’s a snapshot from our Department’s Christmas party. Our lab had an amazing time bowling, and we even brought home a trophy—a gigantic bowling pin! We also enjoyed a delightful picnic by the beach, taking advantage of our university’s location near one of Sydney's most beautiful beaches—definitely a bonus.

As we kick off the year, we are excited to welcome Corinne Haenggi, our new PhD student with a passion for astrobiology, and Liam Hiwitt, who brings a deep interest in fungi to the team. We’re also thrilled to share that our dear colleague Thomas Laird is now officially a PhD candidate as well!

The Ferrari lab team wishes everyone a year filled with joy, exciting science, and plenty of fun!

Investigating Endolithic Microbial Communities in Antarctica

As we step into 2025, we reflect on the exciting conclusion of 2024, which ended with the honourable visit of our collaborator from Italy, Dr. Claudia Coleine - University of Tuscia, Viterbo. Her time with us sparked engaging discussions on the microbiome of Antarctica, the resilience of black fungi, and the persistence of life in extreme environments.

Dr. Coleine has made major contributions to the scientific understanding of microbial life within rocks, known as endoliths. These unique microbial communities are found worldwide and play a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles. However, their composition, diversity, and distribution remain largely unexplored—particularly in Antarctica, where they represent the dominant form of life.

This visit was a remarkable opportunity for our lab, setting the stage for new investigations into endolithic microbial communities from Antarctica. We are excited to delve deeper into these communities that thrive at the very limits of what is possible for life to exist on Earth.

Ferrari Lab Shines: Celebrating Kris and Sanjana's Success!

This month, we’re celebrating two stars from the Ferrari Lab!
First up, huge congratulations to Kristopher Abdulla, who competed in UNSW’s School of Science 1 Minute Thesis (1MT) competition. This academic challenge gives PhD candidates just one minute to explain their groundbreaking research and its importance. Kris took to the stage with his talk, "A Clearer Pathway to a Clearer Antarctica," and made it to the podium! Well done, Kris, for shining in both science and public speaking!

Next, a big round of applause for Sanjana Suresh, who delivered a stunning presentation titled "The Colourful World of Antarctic Fungi," summarising key findings from her honours project. Amazing work, Sanjana, for showcasing your talent for science communication and passion for Antarctic fungi!

Go team Ferrari Lab!

Ferrari Lab on the World Stage: Presenting Research at Global Conferences

Ferrari Lab is kicking off the second semester of 2024 at full steam, and we're excited to welcome some new faces to our team. Nathali Machado and Shruti Sharma have joined us, and they’re already collaborating on an exciting project focused on the exploration of endolithic bacteria.

As part of our global engagement, several members of the lab are gearing up for major international conferences. We’re thrilled to be presenting our research at 19th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology in Cape Town, JGI’s annual symposium in Berkeley, the Second International Symposium on Soil Microbiome and Soil Health in Yangling, China, the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Microbial Ecology Society in Qingdao, China, the Environmental Science and Technology (GEST 2024) in London, and the 4th International Conference in Microbial Ecotoxicology in Sweden. Additionally, we have a busy schedule ahead with three more key events in Australia: JAMS, ESA, and AusME! Check out some of our presentations around the world:

1) “Atmospheric chemosynthesis: an overlooked primary production strategy in a changing climate” – Speaker Belinda Ferrari

2) “Proximity-litigation-based (Hi-C) sequencing unveils novel viruses and validates diversity of Asgard archaeal virome” – Speaker Julia Meltzer

3) “Unveiling petroleum contamination’s impact on microbial trace gas scavengers in Bunger Hills, East Antarctica” – Speaker Kellynn Tan

4) “Microbial survival strategies at the limits of life” - Speaker Belinda Ferrari

5) “Developing the first fungal toxicity test for Antarctica using an endemic fungal species” – Speaker Jordan Vink

It’s an epic time for Ferrari Lab, full of new adventures and opportunities to share our work with the world.

Climate change is wiping out rare bacteria in a 'greening' Antarctica

A warming climate in Antarctica is leading to a shift in the balance of the ecosystem’s microbes which in turn could accelerate the warming climate.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/04/climate-change-wiping-out-rare-bacteria-greening-antarctica

By Lachlan Gilbert UNSW Newsroom

Plenty is known about the existential threat of climate change to plants and animals. But by comparison, we know very little about how microorganisms will be affected by climate change.

And until recently, our knowledge of microorganisms in Antarctica was non-existent, where the effects of climate change are arguably the most profound. But a paper published recently in Conservation Biology provides a new snapshot of the changing composition of microorganisms in Antarctica. 

Professor Belinda Ferrari with UNSW Sydney’s School of Biotech & Biomolecular Science and colleagues visited Casey Station in Eastern Antarctica in 2019 to see whether projections made on soils sampled 14 years earlier about the disappearance of microbes thriving solely on chemicals in the atmosphere were correct.

They were saddened to find that they were.

“These bacteria are really rare,” says Prof. Ferrari.

“They’re the ones that live on trace gases in the atmosphere, but in Antarctica they’re actually the dominant microbes.”

Belinda Ferrari (left) and PhD student Eden Zhang sterilise stainless steel sieves at Mitchell Peninsula, in between sampling. Photo: Cath King

The modelling on soils sampled 14 years earlier used a statistical method never before used with microbes, called Gradient Forest, that’s usually used to project animal and plant species’ survival into the future based on changing environmental parameters.

The model suggested that as the Antarctic desert gets less arid and becomes wetter, the changing conditions favour photosynthetic microbes, or phototrophs – the ones that convert light into energy in the same way plants do – over trace gas chemosynthetic bacteria, which feed on low levels of hydrogen gas present in the atmosphere. And this explains why the chemosynthetic microbes had diminished in numbers.

“Because there are no vascular plants in this region of eastern Antarctica, microbes are really important for primary production,” Prof. Ferrari says, alluding to the process of creating the organic molecules that are crucial to the food web and the basis of almost all life on Earth.

“And so what we predicted will happen is that there will be more phototrophs like algae and cyanobacteria and this will result in a greening effect in Antarctica – that reflects a warming climate.”

Possible effects of this shift in microbe population could have a knock-on effect on the Antarctic ecosystem in addition to the greening effect. Atmospheric chemosynthetic bacteria – or chemotrophs – play a role in carbon sequestration by removing hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in organic compounds. If they were to disappear completely, it could affect greenhouse gas concentration and may even accelerate the warming of the local climate.

“Until recently, climate predictions were made without really looking at the role of microbes,” Prof. Ferrari says.

“We still don’t even really know exactly what these microbes are doing – most of them haven’t even been cultured in the lab. So we think it’s important to monitor changes to the abundance of these bacteria as it could have significant effects on climate and environment.”

The most sustainable Ferrari around

Last year we wrote about how the Ferrari lab, along with 22 other labs at UNSW, had decided to become involved with the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) program and that we were one of only four labs at UNSW to be awarded with a silver certification - with no labs achieving gold certification.

Now, after a year of hard work and dedication - particularly by our lab’s unofficial sustainability coordinator, Jordan - the Ferrari lab has just been awarded the first gold LEAF certification in Australasia! This certification is really exciting for not only the lab, but to the university as a whole. There has been a slowly developing drive amongst the STEM faculties at UNSW to push for increased sustainability in lab spaces and having the first gold lab in Australasia has been the impetus to accelerate this development even further. For example, a goal for next year is that every single lab in the faculty receives a bronze LEAF certification. It’s a huge point of pride for us that our lab has been at the forefront of this change and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store.

Photo of some very proud Ferrari lab members at the LEAF awards. From left to right, front: Belinda, Jordan, Kellynn and Priyanka; back: Tom, Dana and Angelique.

The Ferrari lab has been awarded an ARC Discovery grant for 2024!

We’re all extremely grateful to the Australian Research Council for awarding the Ferrari lab with an ARC Discovery grant for 2024! It’ll support our project where, in collaboration with Dr Christopher McKay of the NASA Ames Research Centre and Prof. Don Cowan of the University of Praetoria, we’ll be aiming to define the biological boundaries to sustain extant life on Mars.

For some background info about the importance of this project and NASA’s Icebreaker Life mission (Spearheaded by Dr. Christopher McKay), click here to read an article Belinda wrote for The Conversation earlier this year.

Our newest publication! Utilization of -Omic technologies in cold climate hydrocarbon bioremediation

Congradulations to Kris on his first publication as part of the Ferrari lab. His paper, titled Utilization of—Omic technologies in cold climate hydrocarbon bioremediation: a text-mining approach and published in Frontiers in Microbiology, is an in-depth analysis of using text mining to categorise and extract the key information from the extensive amount of research on cold climate hydrocarbon bioremediation to uncover the trends and features permeating the literature. Click here to visit the online article and read it for yourself!

The Fellowship of the Graduate

Hello once again, everyone. Just a quick update from us at the Ferrari lab to shout-out Angelique’s two major accomplishments last month. The first was that she is this year’s recipient of the UNSW Big Questions Institute (BQI) Fellowship which is designed to support outstanding young Australian researchers investigating the Big Questions of Science at UNSW; no doubt it’ll help Angelique continue her invaluable work in the lab. The second is that she has finally officially graduated from her PhD! Everyone here is extremely proud of Angelique and we’re always reminded of how blessed we are that she decided to carry on in the Ferrari lab as a research associate.

Big smiles all around!

Forbes interview with PhD-candidate Kristopher Abdullah

Today, Forbes released their interview with one of our PhD candidates, Kris, about his research into the bioremediation of oil spills at Casey station in Antarctica. If you’d like to read the interview and get a quick summary of why the Ferrari lab places such importance on bioremediation projects in Antarctica, click here! Obviously, a big thanks goes out to Forbes editor Elise Shaw for reaching out to Kris and giving him the opportunity to share what he (and our lab) are doing to keep Antarctica clean.