Interdisciplinary team investigates the impact of fungus on the microbiome in human-impacted soils.

Patty Bonito<bonitopa@msu.edu> -

PSM’s Dr Gregory Bonito, Dr Adam Brown, professor in MSU’s College of Art, Art History and Design, and their colleagues have teamed up to investigate how fungi and bacteria work together to pull metals from soils

Truly interdisciplinary research presents challenges that few are willing to face. As science becomes more reductive and research more specialized, finding ways to overlap research and collaborate on projects with other disciplines requires more effort. PSM’s Dr Gregory Bonito, Dr Adam Brown, professor in MSU’s College of Art, Art History and Design, and their colleagues have teamed up to investigate how fungi and bacteria work together to pull metals from soils, and what ultimately becomes of those metals. Bonito, Brown and colleagues are supported by NSF’s Understanding the Rules of Life program, which supports convergent research to understand the interactions among organismal, environmental, social, and human-engineered systems.

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Undergraduate student Nick Srodes (photo, left) runs experiments with fungi and bacteria, isolating them from mining waste sites in the Keweenaw Bay of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “where copper mining has really left a mess of things,” as Srodes says. For his part of the project, Bonito (photo, right) seeks a greater understanding of the formation of fungal microbiomes, “including how and which bacteria can co-exist and function with fungi to transform or transport metals,” Bonito says, “as well as a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of fungal-bacterial interactions, which may allow us to control and engineer these types of associations for industrial processes.”
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On a field trip to Michigan’s upper peninsula, Bonito and Brown explored mining waste areas and took samples to experiment with.

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