Stalking Soviet Soil Bacteria in Estonia
A curious invitation to come to Estonia turned into a weeklong detective excursion into a Cold War-era polluted exclusion zone. The invitation came from MIT Department of Biological Engineering head, Dr. Chris Voigt. The mission was to discover living biological evidence of what might have been the world’s first environmental release of genetically engineered bacteria.
The researchers were returning to a scene that took place before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Soviet shale mine had caught fire and the burning shale released a plume of toxic phenol into the surrounding area. Researchers at a nearby university had been working with a genetically modified soil bacterium that had been engineered to break down phenol. A large quantity of this bacteria was pumped into the mine and left to an uncertain future as the Soviet Union collapsed soon after. Subsequent sampling indicated that not only had the bacteria been successful in breaking down some of the phenol, but it may have passed the genetic tools for doing so into the indigenous soil bacteria of the region. The MIT bacterial sleuths sampled the suspect soil and shipped it to their lab for further sequencing. Results and the full story will appear in an upcoming issue of Asimov Magazine.
Field Work > Svalbard
A Visit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
It is hard to overstate how far north the archipelago of Svalbard is. Officially a part of Norway (though Russia disputes elements of this claim), Svalbard sits between 78º and 80º’s latitude. It is home to a number of “northern-mosts” including the northernmost civilian airport, the northernmost museum, and northernmost repository of agricultural seed. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an apocalyptic safety strategy for the world’s seed storage facilities. A backup for the backups. Any national seed repository that has already produced a complete copy of its seed holdings, may deposit an additional copy in the vault in case of local or even global calamity. A backup of a backup of a backup. The seed must be replenished every six years to ensure the seed is viable. The strategy has remained untested thus far.
The location was chosen in the hopes that Svalbard would serve as a natural freezer, and may remain isolated from wars and environmental disasters that could plague the more populated regions of the planet. However, Svalbard has proved to be far from isolated from these concerns. The islands are warming six times faster than anywhere else on the planet, jumping a full 4º C since the 1970’s. And a war in Russia has strained the odd alliance of local mining communities that have eked out an existence in this most difficult environment.
During my visit to the vault, while attempting to take a photo very close to the front door, the door handle began to turn and the door started to open but wedged itself against the base of my tripod. The door to the vault was unable to open, and I was unable to extract my tripod. The wordless tussle between strangers continued for a moment until the door relaxed, and I could remove my obstruction. As I stood back and prepared my apology, the door swung wide and an HVAC operator would confidently passed me without making eye contact. It’s true, the vault is not cold enough to meet the necessary conditions for this type of seed storage, so a building constructed beside it is filled with diesel powered equipment to further cool it.