Category: Impact

MSc Microbiology students Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson with Drs Paul Dean and Jens Holtvoeth collected brines for extremophile research 1,000m below the surface in the Boulby salt mine.

In October, a team from Teesside University took part in the 10th annual field event on astrobiology, robotics, and planetary exploration (MINAR X), organised by the UKRI Underground Laboratory at the ICL salt mine at Boulby. Dr Jens Holtvoeth was joined by Dr Paul Dean and two microbiology MSc students, Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson to travel 1.000 meters down the shaft and underneath the North Sea, together with scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Manchester, and Newcastle, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena).

The aim of our team was to collect samples of salt and brine for biomarker and DNA analyses to produce a geochemical fingerprint of fossil and living microbial communities and to gain information on cellular adaptation mechanisms of halophile microorganisms to the extreme conditions. This will help to interpret fossil biomarker distributions found in the salt with regard to environmental conditions at the fringes of the evaporating Zechstein Sea about 250 million years ago.

While the team were able to collect brines from a disused part of the mine, aptly named Billingham Bath, the collection of salt samples by coring the salt with sterilised drill bits had to be postponed due to a technical fault of the corer. Thus, the team is looking forward to going down the shaft later this semester, again.

An update on a previous blog post about our microplastic project in Co Durham, UK.

Environment Group researchers Drs Baldini, Baker, He, Rollason and Scott, along with recent Environmental Science graduate, Zhuhaa Siddiq, recently partnered with Durham Wildlife Trust to investigate microplastics in the River Wear. Fieldwork happened over several weeks in late summer 2021 and involved standing in the river with a microplankton net and flow meter for 20 minutes to collect a known volume of river water for microplastics detection. We sampled water and sediments at five locations along the river Wear from the source (near Wearhead) to the tidal limit (Chester-le-Street). Laboratory analysis revealed a pattern of increasing microplastics in river water downstream from the source until river flow was altered by Durham city weirs. A sharp decrease in microplastics was observed at the furthest downstream site, Chester-le-Street. In sediments, there was a clear pattern of microplastics accumulation downstream of wastewater treatment plants. In summer 2022, Environmental Management research project student, Patrick van Loo Jenner, investigated our hypothesis of microplastics accumulation upstream of weirs in Durham as a precursor to scheduled dredging by the Environment Agency. In March 2022, Dr Baldini presented preliminary findings to a Source to Sea workshop addressing plastics pollution at Durham County Council and in July 2022, submitted a final report to Durham Wildlife Trust. A manuscript of our findings is currently in prep. For more on this successful Teesside University collaboration with local partners see https://www.durhamwt.com/source-sea.