( Water. Waste. Energy. This trio of p...)Earth Rx: A microbial biotechnology prescription for global environmental health

"All of these issues are closely interrelated," says Bruce Rittmann, director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology in the Biodesign Institute at ASU. "For example, most of the pollution wastes that we worry about are really just energy put in the wrong place and causing trouble."

It was to address these challenges that Rittmann, along with a group of international colleagues, gathered at a symposium held at ASU last April to work on a roadmap for biology-based solutions to turn these threats into opportunities. The culmination of the workshop was a paper published as the cover story in the latest issue of Environmental Science & Technology (http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag/40/i04/html/021506feature_rittmann.html).

Their solution: a synergistic marriage of two distinct disciplines, microbial ecology and environmental biotechnology. "Together, they offer much promise for helping society deal with some of its greatest challenges in environmental quality, sustainability, security, and human health," Rittmann stated in an excerpt from the paper.

For the majority of Earth's 6 billion year history, microbes ruled, spreading to every nook and cranny on the globe, from geothermal vents on the ocean's floor to arctic permafrost. Now, uncovering and categorizing this abundant biodiversity is one of the chief goals of scientists in the field of microbial ecology ?and may be the key to helping the planet –by putting these rich microbial communities to work to help serve the needs of society through environmental biotechnology.