Researchers from the U.S. and Italy have identified “Chonkus,” a unique cyanobacteria strain, in volcanic ocean vents. This discovery could be a game-changer for carbon sequestration and sustainable manufacturing, promising new ways to tackle climate change.
In a bold and groundbreaking discovery, scientists from the United States and Italy have isolated a novel strain of cyanobacteria from volcanic ocean vents that could offer significant advancements in carbon sequestration and sustainable manufacturing. The newly found strain, affectionately dubbed “Chonkus,” thrives in carbon-rich environments and demonstrates an extraordinary ability to sink naturally in water, making it highly promising for future climate change mitigation projects.
Co-corresponding author Max Schubert, who was a staff scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute when the study was conducted and is now lead project scientist at Align to Innovate, reveals the motivation behind their exploration.
“Dissolved carbon is relatively dilute compared to all the other molecules in the ocean, and that limits the growth of photosynthetic organisms that live there,” he said in a news release.
Their goal was to find a location with an ample supply of carbon to see if any organisms had evolved to capitalize on it. The shallow volcanic vents off the coast of Vulcano in Sicily proved to be the perfect hunting ground.
The expedition assembled by Schubert and co-corresponding author Braden Tierney, who was a postdoc at Wyss at the time of the research, included a diverse team from elite institutions like Harvard Medical School, Weill Cornell Medical College and MIT. They collected water samples from the CO2-rich shallow seeps and transferred these samples to Boston.
There, researchers led by Schubert isolated and characterized the microbes present in these volcanic ocean vents. Their findings were striking. Among the cyanobacteria, two strains — UTEX 3221 and UTEX 3222 — were found.
UTEX 3222, later nicknamed “Chonkus” for its dense and rapid growth properties, showcased significant promise. This strain formed larger colonies, harbored carbon-containing storage granules and had a greater overall carbon content compared to other strains. Remarkably, Chonkus settled swiftly into dense pellets, facilitating easier industrial processing and reducing production costs by concentrating biomass naturally.
The implications of these findings are profound.
“Many of the traits that we observed in Chonkus aren’t inherently useful in their natural environment, but are very useful to humans,” Tierney said in the news release.
This strain’s ability to grow at high density and thrive in warmer temperatures is particularly advantageous in industrial settings. The researchers believe this naturally occurring algae could revolutionize both carbon sequestration efforts and the manufacturing of valuable compounds like omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants.
Inspired by their success, Tierney co-founded The Two Frontiers Project, which aims to explore extreme environments to uncover microbes with industrial applications. The project’s focus areas include carbon capture, CO2 upcycling and coral ecosystem restoration, highlighting the potential multifaceted benefits of their discoveries.
Commenting on the broader significance of this groundbreaking research, George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and professor of health sciences and technology at Harvard and MIT, underscores its critical timing.
“The traits inherent in the naturally evolved cyanobacteria strains described in this research have the potential to be used both in industry and the environment, including biomanufacturing of useful carbon-based products or sinking large volumes of carbon to the ocean floor. While further modifications could be made to enhance these microbes’ abilities, harnessing billions of years of evolution is a significant leg up in humanity’s urgent need to mitigate and reverse climate change,” he said.
This pioneering discovery is published in the journal Applied Environmental Microbiology. It opens up promising new avenues for addressing one of humanity’s most pressing issues — climate change — by leveraging nature’s ingenuity.