The University of Colorado in Boulder started a projected examining the tall grass prairies that use to thrive throughout the middle of this country. Of course, today, very little of this original prairie grass is still around. The researchers collected 31 samples of the original prairie grass. The majority of samples came from nature preserves and graveyards.
Much like what we have been doing in class the last couple of weeks, the researchers used DNA sequencing to identify the bacteria that is predominant in these native grasses. The bacteria identified is Verrucomicrobia, which is not very well known. The goal of this project is to examine this bacteria and see what role it played in the in prairie growth. Their experiments have also revealed that the different samples also have different bacterial make up. They would like to reconstruct what this land use to look like prior to human arrival and interactions.
Although it is a very new study, it offers great potential for new understanding of what the land use to be before people transformed the land for crops growth. If this bacteria can be studied and reintroduced into the environment and maybe regrow the tall grass prairies, to an extent. But would people be interested in walking through an environment that recreates the original land, or would people prefer to keep the land for crop production? The reason these prairies were demolished was because of the fertile ground and potential for crop growth.
What do you think could explain the difference in bacteria population across the different samples? How do authentic do you think these bacteria populations are to what the land use to be? After years of treatment and environment changes due to humans, from planting to power plants emissions, it's hard to imagine that the bacteria fully represents what the microbes use to be, but it gives a good starting point.
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Ooo, your comment about the environment and microbes being different now from back then makes me think that this whole project might not even be possible. I mean if the grass needed a special microbe to grow, and it has since then died off or can hardly be found, who's to say that it can even survive in the environmental conditions of today??
ReplyDeleteMy opinion is that they're wasting their time. The prairies that are still left will have become housing subdivisions in 20 years.
Sadly, you're probably right Gaby. We can do what we can to try to bring back what use to be, but in reality, the population is going to continue to grow and more and more land will be sacrificed to house these people.
DeleteI dont Understand the correlation between the reintroduction of bacteria in the environment and the reconstruction of the land. What I basically know is that this massive emission of green house gases to the environment is modifying the environment and this has a very negative effects on the land. Also people are throwing Nitrogen to "fertilize" and increase crop production. This creates the called nitrogen oxide gas which is emitted in high quantities in the air. Bacteria reintroduction to our land is NOT the solution because of one reason: this mistreatment of our land is happening continuously and factors that led to the disappearance of indigenous bacterial colonies are still there, in turn the reintroduction of this bacteria won't do much. We are still using the same methods, the same pesticides and the same chemical leading to its first disappearance. Bacteria must have an active role for prairie growth but given the right stimulus (right heat, right minerals, natural interaction with the environment). Humans are crazy, money oriented creatures. I don't know what we are leaving to the future generation.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a valid point! If they can regrow this bacteria, how can it survive in these times? There has been so much change to the land and overall environment due to humans introducing new chemicals and even plants that plants that use to be able to live most likely cannot survive now.
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