e-mail: taupp@interchange.ubc.ca
office phone: 604-827-4216
fax: 604-822-6041

Project:

Development of genomic tools for monitoring and improving passive mitigation of mine drainage

    Passive treatment systems are defined as natural or engineered systems that make use of naturally occurring geochemical and biological processes for detoxification of water and soils. Mine drainage and other similar wastewaters are a significant source for potential contamination of aquatic environments in Canada and the World. Thus, there is a need for effective, inexpensive and sustainable approaches to remediate metal leachate (ML) and acid mine drainage (AMD) from mine sites. Microbial communities are critical for successful and sustainable performance of passive treatment systems. These communities and their metabolisms have been mainly characterized using cultivation-dependent methods and as most organisms from the environment cannot be cultured in the laboratory, we propose to open the “black-box” of passive treatment systems by developing and using culture-independent metagenomic approaches (high throughput state-of the-art genomic platforms) to study microbial community structures and metabolisms in passive treatment systems used at mine sites for the bioremediation of drainage contaminated with heavy metals.

Project:

Mining metagenomic libraries for the discovery of new biocatalysts

    Although selective isolation schemes have successfully identified microbes mediating biodegradation and biotransformation of all kinds of different substrate, they capture only a minor fraction (0.1% to 1% in most habitats) of the metabolic potential within complex and largely uncultivated microbial assemblages. New approaches in environmental genomics (metagenomics) coupled to functional screening shows great promise in bridging this cultivation gap. We are developing new high-throughput screening assays combining robotic clone picking with plate-reader assays. These screenings are combined with systems to apply various screening hosts in order to improve screening efficiency. We are particularly interested in the breakdown of cellulose and xylan, the discovery of genes involved in heavy-metal resistance and the mechanism of the anaerobic oxidation of methane.

Publications: