Mine fungi
The iron mine in Kiruna is contaminated by oil spills and other toxic compounds such as heavy metals. The oil seems to be actively degraded within the mine, and we have isolated metagenomic and metatranscriptomic information from both water and sediment to investigate the microbial community and activity in the mine. We have also isolated fungi from the mine that use oil as a carbon source for growth and investigate their degradation ability and ability to grow on heavy metals. The long-term aim of the project is to develop methods for bioremediation of contaminated wastewater.
The methods we use in this project include metagenomics and -transcriptomics, mass spectrometry to determine oil degradation, and differential gene expression analysis to find the underlying genetic mechanisms that enable oil degradation.
Group members involved in the Mine fungi project: Noah Hensen, Petter Madsen, Thibault Caron