Thread by @ldalcaraz

🧵Explaining our latest paper in a few tweets: Metagenomics of mine tailing rhizospheric communities and its selection for plant establishment towards bioremediation.
Available here:

authors.elsevier.com/a/1clSF3MmJPkc… (1/n)

If you are not aware, mining is relevant for day-to-day activities. Probably you are reading this right now because mining provided core components for your phone, tablet, or just the electricity that enables them. (2/n)

In Mexico, our country, nearly 12% of the territory is devoted to mining activities! (3/n)

Unfortunately, mining, like everything in life, has consequences. The disposal of mine waste is dumped sometimes as acid drainage. (4/n)

Current mining practices and regulations consider mine reclamation activities for the company responsible for the operation. (5/n)

However, long-abandoned mines (ca. 70 years) did not have such reclamation obligations. We worked in a long-abandoned mine tailing in Sonora, Mexico. (6/n)

Unintentionally, the mine tailing abandonment provided a new ecological niche to be colonized, however highly selective with the chosen ones (desert + heavy metals + no organic matter) (7/n)

Plants naturally colonized mine tailings. In a previous article, some plants were identified with potential for bioremediation. The strategy is known as phytostabilization peerj.com/articles/3280/ (8/n)

In this work, we mixed classic microbiology, experimental evolution, and metagenomics. To find out microbial communities capable of interacting with plants while resisting harsh, heavy metal pollution. (9/n)

We found an unexpectedly high diversity of bacteria and genes related to stress responses and plant growth promotion. (10/n)

Then, we selected and “trained” bacteria to interact with young plants and heavy metal presence. (11/n)

Traditional plant-growth-promoting bacteria evaluate their effect as isolates. Here we are using a synthetic community. A community advantage is that they have better chances to survive when applied in field conditions. (12/n)

With metagenomics, we describe microbial diversity and the very genes of the community and found plant-growth promotion genes in our synthetic communities. (13/n)

We used plant ecology, physiology, along with microbial genomics results aiming to design phytostabilization strategies. Photostabilization aims to immobilize the pollutants due to erosion and block their passage to the food chain. (14/n)

Further work will test the synthetic community and describe its physiology. Stay tuned more!! (15/n)

I would like to thank all the collaborators!! But specially @mikebartgeier and @DianaGallegoB , for their commitment and hard work! And the funding for @UNAM_MX and the @fciencias. Full article here authors.elsevier.com/a/1clSF3MmJPkc… or reach me and happily will share the PDF. (16/n)

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