Scattered across the state, pockets of boiling hot springs teem with organisms. Never having been "scientifically discovered," these life forms don't even have names. They just eat and multiply in there, surviving in temperatures that other creatures can't.
Useful little buggers, thinks UNLV microbiologist Brian Hedlund.
Hedlund has made a career out of exploring what exists in the depths of Nevada's hot springs. Unidentified organisms make up between 45 percent and 90 percent of what's living in there. Such heat-loving bacteria and microorganisms, called thermophiles, are the darlings of the booming biotech industry now. The enzymes they throw off spark biochemical reactions and are key to a process that rapidly multiplies DNA.
There are hundreds of different species, and many thousands more that are yet to be discovered. Some are already used to convert corn to sugar for your soft drinks. Some can help make renewable fuels more efficiently. That's the kind that Hedlund and his team are searching for in Nevada's pools.
"We're finding an incredible abundance of new organisms in Nevada's hot springs, more so even than in Yellowstone National Park," says Hedlund. "These new lineages are pushing the limits of how life works."
The Art of Science
Hedlund has become something of eco-prospector, a harvester of hidden treasures. He leads his team on hiking trips hours into the field and far off the beaten path in search of new life forms. Just preserving the invisible organisms for a cross-state journey back to UNLV's lab is a difficult task. The organisms, unseen by the naked eye, are often frozen onsite in the Northern Nevada desert to be sure nothing changes between the time they leave the pool and are analyzed in the lab.
His success identifying and characterizing new hot springs organisms has earned Hedlund major professional kudos. After he arrived at UNLV in 2003, he earned the National Science Foundation's top award for young researchers. He's now recognized as a leading expert on this untapped but potentially rich renewable resource of Nevada's. His work also caught the attention of researchers at Lucigen, a Wisconsin-based biotechnology company.
"(Identifying new organisms) is a very complicated process that requires doing precisely the right thing, at the right time, to pull it off," says Lucigen's Tom Schoenfeld. "It's an art that Brian and his team are very experienced at."
Hedlund and Schoenfeld had one of those random meetings at a research conference in 2007. They realized they were both working on the same Nevada springs. Collectively, they figured, their data could offer a more complete picture of the science inside the hot springs.
"Brian's expertise with high-temperature ecosystems aligned perfectly with our work," says Schoenfeld. "We're just starting to explore Nevada's hot springs for useful enzymes that can move science forward."
The partnership grew as Hedlund and Lucigen teamed with University of Delaware scientist Eric Wommack on a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project to sequence and analyze the DNA of microorganisms in Northern Nevada's Great Boiling Spring. Working with Lucigen gave Hedlund a chance to push his ongoing hot springs investigation in new directions. "For years I've focused on understanding nature," says Hedlund. Not exactly science for the sake of science, but the kind of academic research that seems far removed from everyday lives. "Working with industrial partners like Lucigen gives me a chance to pair that basic science with applied research in a way that gets useful discoveries quickly into the marketplace to solve problems."
Problems like clean energy.
Biofuels: The Next Generation
During their work on the Great Boiling Spring, the team noticed several new organisms that could degrade plant material into simple sugars -- the kind of process needed to produce biofuels. Spurred along by the DOE partnership and, more recently, funding from the Nevada Renewable Energy Consortium, Hedlund set his sights on discovering a creature that could make biofuels cheaper and easier to produce.
Biofuels production starts with a feedstock, most often corn kernels and sugar cane. Enzymes created by microorganisms consume that feedstock, breaking it down into simple sugars, which are then fermented into liquid fuels for vehicles. Hampering current biofuels production, though, is the so-called food vs. fuel debate. Biofuels require the same resources that food producers do. So, in the competition for limited water and land what wins out, food or fuel?
Hedlund's work circumvents that debate by advancing second-generation biofuels, made with agricultural wastes like corn stover and wood pulp instead of primary food sources like corn. The process is still the same, but agricultural wastes are much more challenging to turn into fuel, requiring more work to get the same result. The hurdle now is finding a way to more efficiently extract energy from these sources.
Enzymes from thermophiles are ideal because they perform well in high temperatures. Chemical reactions occur faster when it's hot. So faster, more efficient processing could drive the cost of biofuels production down and make it more cost competitive. As it turns out, the Great Boiling Spring is an ideal site for hungry thermophiles. "Hot springs don't have a large amount of biomass, so you wouldn't really expect to find microbes within the springs that can eat organic materials from plants," says David Mead, founder and CEO of Lucigen. "It's strange, but they're in there and in greater numbers than almost any other site."
Researchers think this could be due to the proximity of desert plants to Nevada's hot springs, which over time blew into the springs and may have given the organisms an opportunity to evolve into biomass munchers. Also, many Nevada springs flow a bit slower than their Yellowstone brethren, giving bacteria more opportunity to grow.
Nevada's Newest Frontier
Hedlund's bioprospectors have already identified several new organisms. They are now testing to see how they break down agricultural wastes under different conditions. Once the UNLV team identifies a promising organism, Lucigen steps in. The company examines which enzymes it uses to break down feedstock and evaluates how fast that particular organism can accomplish the conversion to sugar.
"It's kind of like gambling," Lucigen's Mead says of the effort. "We regularly visit the same springs and sometimes we get back to the lab with high hopes and find nothing. Other times we're pleasantly surprised, which has been the case so far with the Great Boiling Spring."
The eventual success of second-generation biofuels -- and freedom from our nation's dependence on foreign oil -- could hinge on tiny, hyperactive microorganisms, some of which still may be anonymously floating around in Northern Nevada hot springs.
"I see this as a grand challenge," Hedlund says. "Nevada's hot springs are at a frontier of microbiology, and the search for organisms that can aid biofuels gives me a chance to dive into something important."
What's a Hot Spring?
From the aptly named city of Hot Springs, Ark., to vacation destinations like Yellowstone National Park, hot springs dot the nation. Most often, they are heralded as tranquil, therapeutic oases or bustling tourist traps. Though many states are more well-known as hot springs hot spots, Nevada leads the nation with more than 300.
So what are they and why are there so many in Nevada?
A hot spring is a naturally occurring body of water that's heated from below ground. A couple factors contribute to Nevada's hot water. First the state is undergoing tectonic extension, which means our land is being stretched by movement from the Pacific and North American plates (think San Andreas Fault). This process thins the earth's crust, bringing magma closer to the surface and making surface groundwater hotter. Second, the state's numerous faults also make for deeper, and thus hotter, paths for groundwater to flow.
Great Boiling Spring near the town of Gerlach in Northern Nevada has become the focus for biofuels research in part because of its accessibility (many hot springs can only be accessed after hours of hiking) and because of its high concentration of new and potentially beneficial microorganisms. Scientists from around the world think these organisms just might hold the key to better wastewater treatment, biofuels production, and who knows what else.
Hot Springs From Here to China
UNLV microbiologist Brian Hedlund is leading an international team of researchers to be the first to detail how life works in the largest system of hot springs in China.
Through a five-year, $3.75 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Hedlund and scientists from eight U.S. and six Chinese universities will identify the microscopic organisms living within the Tengchong Geothermal Field in Southwest China and how they function and interact. The project is the largest of its kind and will build upon efforts under way in the U.S. to understand hot springs ecosystems and their potential contributions to biotechnology and renewable energy.
The project will strengthen scientific collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers and give UNLV students and local high school science teachers a chance to study abroad and participate in summer fieldwork.
