Source: School of Life Sciences
Written by: School of Life Sciences

A significant progress of the microbial ecology study in extreme environments was made by the research team of Professor Wensheng SHU at School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University. The findings were recently highlighted by Nature China.

Acid mine drainage (AMD), which is caused by mining activities, is one of the major environmental pollutions in water ecosystem with the rapid development of modern industry. In the last decade, the study of microbial ecology in extreme environments has received a great deal of attention globally, and AMD has been considered as a model ecosystem for these researches. The direct release of such extremely acidic water without harmless treatment will lead to a vast environmental pollution of acidification and heavy metals. Professor Wensheng SHU and co-workers have now analyzed 59 water samples from 14 mining sites with different mineralogy across southeast China and showed that pH largely determines the microbial composition and diversity in AMD. Such results have revealed potential mechanisms of adaptation of extreme conditions in AMD microbial communities and also supplied a basic theory of biotechnology for controlling and restoring the pollution of acidification in future. The original article “Contemporary environmental variation determines microbial diversity patterns in acid mine drainage” has been published online by The ISME Journal in December 2012. This work is equally contributed by Ph.D. candidate Jialiang KUANG and Professor Linan HUANG at School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University.

Nature China is dedicated to highlighting the best research being produced in Hong Kong and Mainland China in science and clinical medicine. Every week the editors survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from China, and provide engaging short summaries. Nature China has provided a comment for this work with the title: “Microbial ecology: Acid reigns”. As mentioned in the comment, microbes play an important role in shaping the mineral composition of their environment and the findings offer scientists an invaluable insight into why microbes live where they do and how they survive in extreme environments.