Researchers hunting down extreme life
ACADEMICS from Edge Hill University are exploring extreme environments in the hope of discovering new species of microbes that will help conserve the salterns in Cabo Verde, and assist future developments in biotechnology.
Dr André Antunes, senior lecturer in Microbial Genetics, will lead the project helped by the Government-backed Global Challenges Research Fund.
He is working with Dr Marta Filipa Simões, junior research fellow in the Biology department and Dr James Rowson, lecturer in Earth Sciences in the Geography department, collaborating with Aires da Moura and Hélio Rocha from the Jean Piaget University of Cabo Verde, which covers 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
This year-long project will survey microbial diversity in salterns on three islands in Cabo Verde (Sal, Boavista, and Maio), formerly used for the production of salt but now mostly abandoned and under threat from construction pressure in coastal areas.
These are neglected areas that have seen a fall in jobs and rise in poverty, and this project will help reverse this process.
Once samples are collected, microbes will be isolated, characterised, preserved and made available for future studies.
As they are analysing locations that have never been studied before, André thinks it is highly likely that they will make significant new discoveries, including the isolation of novel microbial species.
The samples will be collected at the end of May and returned to the UK for analysis.