Human impacted soils tend to harbour different microbial communities to those areas less affected by human activities, a team of researchers working with Bristol school children have found.
Together, they studied the species of bacteria found in soils at two local schools, Merchants Academy and Brunel Academy, the Avon riverbank, Queens Square, Fenswood Farm and Ashton Court Deer Park.
The team found that human impacted soils still showed a large diversity between sites in terms of the microbes present and the study highlighted that other factors like the geochemical make-up of the soil and environmental factors also play a key role.
Lead author, Dr Matt Tarnowski explained: “One reason researchers are doing this is that many important biotechnologies like novel antibiotics are found in the soil. Building on this interest our multidisciplinary team from the University of Bristol investigated what the soils of Bristol contained in collaboration with local people to try and understand how discoveries in soils might be used in a fair and equitable way. The project started by working with local school children, who helped with the science.”
Dr Thomas Gorochowski, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at the University of Bristol School of Biological Sciences, and co-author on the study added: “Surprisingly, there is a real lack of studies on soils from urban environments. We not only got the chance to sample some of these, but had a lot of fun doing so too. The children loved supporting us as citizen scientists and people of all ages were fascinated by the live DNA sequencing experiments we performed at festivals and community events across the city to see what the soils contained.”
The full University of Bristol press release is available here.
- ‘Soil as a transdisciplinary research catalyst: from bioprospecting to biorespecting’ by Matthew J. Tarnowski, Gilda Varliero, Jim Scown, Emily Phelps and Thomas E. Gorochowski, Royal Society Open Science (2023), Volume 10, Issue 11. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230963