News
Streptomyces isolated from Antarctic soil.
Photo by Nicole Benaud
Nicole has been awarded an Antarctic Science International Bursary for 2020, which will enable her to extend her research into potential anticancer and antimicrobial natural products from Streptomyces (pictured) and Kribbella bacteria isolated from eastern Antarctic soils.
https://www.antarcticsciencebursary.org.uk/research-activities/
Belinda was recently interviewed by Clare Watson for the ABCs Radio National Science Show, along with Darren Koppel from UTS, to discuss bioremediation of residual fuels in Antarctica, and the ecological importance of preserving this pristine environment. She emphasized the current strategies our lab is employing in collaboration with the Australian Antarctic Division to clean up Antarctic soil.
“Australian Antarctic Division is leading, I think, the world in terms of polar remediation. So they've developed some novel technologies. So that's basically digging up all the contaminated soil, putting it in a pile, adding in some nutrients to try and stimulate those organisms. So some, some nitrogen, some carbon, some moisture, even trying to heat it up a little bit so that it comes above freezing, to try and activate that part of the community”.
Check out the interview here:
Waste at Wilkes Station, Antarctica. Photos by Graham Snow https://sites.google.com/site/wilkesstationhistory/home/legacy-waste-and-heritage
Nic talked about "Bacterial natural product gene biomining in polar desert soils". You can read the first publication related to her research here.
Last Friday Sarita and Nicole presented their PhD research to the BABS audience. The seminar was hosted by Belinda.
Sari presented "The toxicity of residual hydrocarbon and polar metabolites on Antarctic soil microbial diversity". You can read more about her research here.
Congratulations to Cath for submitting her PhD thesis.
Cath is a PhD candidate in the Mammal Lab at the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre
in the School of Biological, Environmental and Earth Science (BEES).
Her research project investigates the respiratory microbiome of whales and dolphins and its potential use as an indicator for individual and population health. For more info and publications visit her website here.
Belinda Ferrari attended the Australian Society for Microbiology Conference and she gave an interesting presentation about the Bacteria living on thin air and their strategies for survival in the harsh Antarctic environment .
Sally gave an interesting presentation about nitrogen cycling in biopiles for remediation of Antarctic fuel contaminated soil in Darwin during the SETAC Conference 2019.
Congratulations Sal!
We are very pleased to share that Sari submitted her thesis on June 28! Sari’s research focused on the characterization of polar metabolites and their potential toxicity in hydrocarbon contaminated Antarctic soil.
Check out one of her publications here.
Congratulations Sari!
Congratulations to Belinda Ferrari, her team and all those involved in this great publication “Characterization of polar metabolites and evaluation of their potential toxicity in hydrocarbon contaminated Antarctic soil elutriates”.
This paper has three main highlights:
Polar metabolites have a higher solubility than their parent hydrocarbons and are potentially bioavailable.
Nine aldehydes ranging from nC2-nC12 were found in hydrocarbon contaminated soil elutriates.
Aldehydes could be potential chemical markers for hydrocarbon degradation.
You can find this publication here.
Belinda gave a seminar to the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at UNSW.
In her talk, entitled ‘The Abyss to Casey station’, Belinda shared her exciting experiences from her recent expedition to Antarctica.
The talk was an opportunity to join the team for one of the most emblematic photos, when we all crammed into the same lift on the way back to the lab.
We are very pleased to share that Nic submitted her thesis on June 3! Her research used next generation sequencing technology and novel culturing techniques to identify polar soil bacterial communities with novel biosynthetic potential.
Her research had three main objectives: To identify polar soil bacterial communities with novel biosynthetic potential, establish a culture collection of Antarctic isolates with demonstrated bioactive capabilities and to perform whole genome sequencing on biotechnologically promising isolates for biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) mining.
Check out her first publication here.
Congratulations Nic!
