This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: There are millions of species of bacteria and archaea on Earth, remarkably little is known about most of them. Now, researchers have mined the genomes of thousands of microorganisms preserved at the RIKEN BioResource Research Center (BRC) to find organisms that may be capable of capturing CO2.
BRC, located in Tsukuba—one of Japan's largest centers of scientific research—is a unique, world-class research facility. Researchers there collect and carefully manage the quality of biological resources—such as mice, plants, cells, genes and microorganisms—used in research and provide these resources to research institutions around the world. These high-quality biological resources help ensure the reproducibility of experiments and support the credibility of science.
The researchers involved in the current project, from the Microbe Division (also known as the Japan Collection of Microorganisms, JCM), thoroughly analyzed the genomes of approximately 6,700 microbial strains and discovered that roughly 300 of them possess a set of genes involved in the fixation of CO2. This finding could contribute to research aimed at reducing CO2 emissions using microorganisms and slowing global warming. The work is published in the journal Microbes and Environments.
JCM staff collect and store microbial strains discovered and cultured by microbiologists from around the world. In addition to genomic information, they also collect data that is useful for experiments and culturing, such as the environments in which the microorganisms were found and the conditions under which they grow. The collection contains more than 32,000 microbial strains.
Of these, approximately 21,000—those for which information has been published in scientific papers or as genetic sequence data—are made publicly available, and the center provides more than 4,000 strains annually to researchers both in Japan and abroad. The current research aimed to make full use of the JCM collection, and the researchers decided to focus their investigation on the CO2 fixation capabilities of microorganisms. "To be honest, this was the kind of research I'd been hoping someone else would take on," laughs Arisa Nishihara, a postdoctoral researcher on the team.
The project to discover CO2 fixation capabilities turned out to be a painstaking two-year analysis process. Microorganisms are divided into eukaryotes—such as molds and yeasts—and prokaryotes, which include bacteria and archaea. Scientists estimate that millions of species of bacteria and archaea exist on Earth, yet only a small fraction have been formally described and given scientific names.
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