The winning project called BIOSINK brings together experts from different backgrounds who all contribute in their unique ways towards the success of this climate change combatting initiative. Like with any new discoveries, it has taken time, effort, and many steps to get to the point where the team is today - and there is still much to be done.
We asked Alexander Tøsdal Tveit to answer a few questions on behalf of the winning team to learn about their work so far and what will happen with the project going forward.
Tell us about the journey leading up to winning this award. How did the initiative get started, and how have you been developing the idea so far?
"This project started many years ago, when Mette M. Svenning started working on methane-consuming bacteria in Arctic soils. Over the years, she and Anne Grethe Hestnes isolated many of these bacteria to study their way of life in Arctic soils. Some years later when I had joined the lab at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, we started looking into the ability of these bacteria to live on the methane concentrations found in air.
When we saw that some of them had the unique ability to consume very low concentrations of methane directly from air, we knew we had something special. Much work followed, trying to understand why they were so efficient at consuming methane.
At the same time, the ideas started developing in the lab that we might use these bacteria to reduce methane emissions from waste and industry. Often these emissions are too dilute to burn for energy, so bacteria could be an alternative solution to harvest this powerful greenhouse gas and help solve a major global problem. Basically, the more efficient your bacteria are at eating methane, the better it is.
However, an important problem that we didn’t know how to solve was how to create a system where these bacteria could grow well but also have access to methane gas so that we could use them to remove methane. We didn’t have the technical competence to come up with a solution. That all changed one year ago when Lisa Y. Stein, a microbiologist and biotechnology expert from University of Alberta and one of the co-winners in our team, noticed our work, saw the potential, and contacted us. She knew about a team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in San Francisco who had developed a bioreactor system that solved many known technical challenges for using bacteria in methane removal. After brief discussions we agreed that we could potentially develop a unique and efficient system for removal of methane by combining their technology with our bacteria. Now it is time to put the pieces together and start testing, which is what BIOSINK is all about. We will all meet in San Francisco at the end of the year to initiate the work."
How will the award help you advance your winning initiative?
"The recognition from this award is extremely important. We need people to be aware of the work to get the support required to do this, and the award does a great job in spreading the word. This is a high-risk endeavour, and there is no guarantee that it will succeed, so we also need support from our institutions that this is worth spending time and resources on. In that sense, the award helps to illustrate the potential and value in our ideas to those not working on the topic, at our institution and elsewhere. It is also a boost for us personally to know that people believe in the idea. That makes the effort worthwhile. And finally, the extra resources that come with the award are very helpful in setting up the collaborations, test experiments, and meetings that are necessary to initiate the work."
How do you plan to use UArctic's network in implementing your idea? Who would you wish to collaborate with to take your work to the next level?
"We want to use the UArctic network to maintain contact between the institutions that are already involved in the project. This is also a great opportunity to invite new collaborators into our team. What we are looking for now are experts on genetics to initiate the work on genetic selection and genetic engineering to make our bacteria even better at consuming methane, and at producing the chemicals that we are interested in."
What kind of a future do you envision for the initiative?
"I think that if we can produce methane filters that are efficient at removing low methane concentrations from emission sources like barns (cattle) or waste treatment plants, we would have achieved something important. If one could additionally use the bacteria in the methane filters to produce biomass or chemicals that are useful for other purposes, that would be fantastic.
Often science works in a way that multiple initiatives together lead to an outcome that becomes useful. Whether our solution is the final version of the methane filters that will be put in mass production is not so important. What is important is that we try to contribute parts of the knowledge required to make the methane filters that can work at a large scale. If someone succeeds in doing this over the next decade and we have contributed to it, I would consider the project a success."
The Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award provides high-level recognition for innovative ideas that transform knowledge into action to help address the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. The prize comes with a 100,000 euro unrestricted grant that is intended to help develop the ideas through outreach, engagement, and communication.