The secret to solving climate change could be hiding in your toilet
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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Scientists at Colorado State University think that solutions to climate change could be hiding in your shower head, water heater or toilet.
Microbiologist James Henriksen is researching whether microscopic organisms that have adapted to live in these environments possess traits that people could one day use to sequester carbon dioxide — which contributes to global warming — or scrub harmful pollutants from the environment.
Henriksen is no stranger to such discoveries. In 2023, he and fellow researchers discovered a new type of bacteria that metabolizes carbon dioxide released from underwater volcanic vents.
They called their finding, “Chonkus.” Like plants, Chonkus uses photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide into energy and oxygen.
“Half the air you're breathing comes from microbes,” Henriksen said, in a press release on May 19.
Now, Henriksen and his team are calling on citizens to submit samples from their homes, with the hope of discovering the next Chonkus.
The Extremophile Campaign looks at whether similar microbes could be lurking in people’s houses and natural springs. The study is a collaboration with CitiSci, a participatory science platform launched in 2007 at CSU that crowdsources data from people around the world.
Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Sarah Newman, the director of operations for CitiSci to understand the study and how people can get involved.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
Rocky Mountain PBS: Can you explain what extremophiles are?
Sarah Newman: Extremophiles are essentially, microorganisms that live in extreme places. So places that might be really hot or extremely cold, very salty or, maybe overly basic, super high pressure environments or low pressure environments.
Just the places that you would normally think nothing is going to live there
Another type of extremophile habitat, if you will, is places that change their environment frequently. So things that go from wet to dry, wet to dry, wet to dry, where the organism has to adapt to that extreme condition change often.
A shower head is a good example of that.
RMPBS: Why are scientists interested in extremophiles?
SN: If there is a way to turn something that might not normally look like food or something useful into something useful, microbes are going to figure it out.
RMPBS: How can microbes be used to fight climate change?
SN: On its own, (a single type of bacteria) is probably not gonna solve climate change, but perhaps it could be scaled in a different kind of environment, where it captures CO2 out of the air, which sinks and then is disposed of in a different way.
We're in the early stages here. What I hear a lot of my colleagues saying, and what I read a lot about, is that not just one solution will solve our high amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. We'll need lots of different kinds of solutions.
RMPBS: Citizen science feels like that's a really hot term these days. What is citizen science, and how does it help to advance research like this?
SN: Citizen science is the process of engaging the public in scientific research, and that can be all manner of parts of the scientific process.
It could be developing the research question, it could be collecting data, it could be analyzing data, and it can even be writing up results and publishing or creating a white paper or sharing the data back out.
Researchers can't go to all the places where people have potential samples, so it made sense to involve the public.
The other thing that it offers is an opportunity to share the science of microbiology with more people.
RMPBS: What surprises people the most when they learn about these microbes?
SN: I think one of the things that's amazing is that people realize they can be a scientist in their own home, that it's not something that's abstract, that's happening out there, but it's something that they actually can be a part of.
The other thing is with microbiology in particular, it's not something all of us grew up learning about. It's still a very novel frontier, very new and very exciting, and it has a lot of adventure to it. It's just it's a place where people can be like, wow, like that's cool. I didn't know about that.
This project takes something that seems, perhaps isolated or academic and puts it right in front of you and says, ‘no, you got this. You can do this. You can take a sample and send it in.’
Type of story: Q&A
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
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