Abstract Detail
Genetics/Molecular Biology Czaplicki, Lauren M [1], Gunsch, Claudia [1]. Evaluating Fungal Ecology under Heavy Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Soil Contamination. Fungal ecology is interesting from an environmental engineering perspective because many saprobic fungi have powerful degradative enzymes. Biostimulation uses these enzymes to transform pollutants into less concerning compounds. This endogenous microbe stimulation remediation method is often preferable to other methods as it can be applied in situ, is generally cost-effective, and is more sustainable in comparison to physical-chemical treatments. There are many ways to evaluate the fungal ecology at a site, including culturing, cloning and next generation sequencing technologies. This project incorporates mycology, genomics, and environmental engineering to scan soil DNA from a site which is heavily polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for potentially useful organisms. To date, at least five distinct fungal strains have been cultured from this soil matrix, obtained from the Atlantic Wood Industries Superfund site in Portsmouth, Virginia. Future work will use Illumina MiSeq technology to characterize these communities further, and investigate methods to encourage the proliferation of useful taxa.
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Related Links:
In a guest blog post on Superfund@Duke, I describe the high-level motivation for this work and how it fits into an engineering design.
1 - Duke University, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Durham, NC, 27708, USA
Keywords:
contamination
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
superfund site
biostimulation
remediation
soil fungi.
Presentation Type: Offered Paper - Paper
Session: 3
Location: Room 104 AB/Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center
Date: Monday, June 9th, 2014
Time: 8:45 AM
Number: 3002
Abstract ID:217
Candidate for Awards:Graduate Student Oral Presentation Award | 