DNA helps pollution management

Dr Alan McCarthy of the School of Biological Sciences has been awarded a substantial grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of their initiative in waste and pollution management.

Disposal to landfill is a major route for waste treatment in the UK, but degradation of the waste used as landfill to methane gas is a complex and poorly understood process, dependent on the activity of populations of micro-organisms. The methane can be abstracted for use as fuel, or simply flared off in an attempt to stabilise the site for ultimate redevelopment.

Landfill sites contain many microbes that cannot be recovered and cultured in laboratories. Dr McCarthy's initiative offers the first opportunity to study these bacteria directly. The long term aim of the research is to produce new analytical tools for the waste treatment industry and its regulators that will enable determination of the activity and stability status of these potentially volatile sites. The research aims to circumvent the problems of analysing the activity of these microbial populations by simply extracting DNA directly from sites and, by using sophisticated technology, identify and assess the activity of key waste degraders.

The research is in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Microbiology Research, Porton Down.