Scientist wins $6.5 million to study bog-eating bugs

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Former health inspector Sue Turner has won $6.5 million to study the genetics of a sewage-eating bug.

Dr Turner, a senior lecturer in biological science at Auckland University, has been interested in bugs since she spent four years looking for them in food and water supplies for the Health Department in the 1980s.

Her study of the voracious acidovorax bug may lead to faster and more reliable sewage-treatment techniques, which could be worldwide money-spinners for wastewater companies such as Watercare.

The Government's Foundation for Research, Science and Technology has given identical grants of $1.3 million a year for five years to Dr Turner's team and to AgResearch, which is studying bugs in the second stomachs of cows, sheep, deer and goats.

Both teams are commissioning overseas research institutes to run their bugs through machines which can read most of their genetic structure. The New Zealand teams will then fill in the gaps, try to work out what each gene does and see if they can improve on nature.

At present, for example, the stomach bugs that AgResearch is studying cannot break down 20 to 40 per cent of the grass and other fibre that animals eat.

"We are targeting enzymes which we can use to improve that fibre degradation," said AgResearch scientist Graeme Attwood.

Dr Turner said the two projects would work together to build up the genetic skills that would be the basis of New Zealand's future biotechnology industry.

"We will try to develop it as a platform for developing new industries and new processes in the wastewater treatment industry."

Born on a dairy and beef farm at Kairanga, near Palmerston North, Dr Turner studied microbiology at Massey University, started work as a health inspector in Lower Hutt, and moved to Auckland with her husband in 1989.

She then spent six years working on wastewater disposal and beach water quality for the Auckland Regional Council and doing a doctoral thesis on microbial signs of faecal pollution in water.

She then shifted into a research career at Auckland University, studying tiny bacterial "communities" such as the scum that often forms on top of liquids.

"We now understand that that is the normal lifestyle for most bacteria - not as single organisms in water. The vast majority are attached to communities on the surface," she said.

As she tells it, she turned naturally to sewage-eating bugs because they convert human wastes and other organic material into massive living communities of bacteria which clump together and eventually settle on tank floors.

"Wastewater activated sludge is just the most wonderful stuff to study because it's just jam-packed full of bacteria.



"We want to understand how that microbial community functions, what controls it, and how we can make it better, faster and more reliable."

Dr Attwood said the AgResearch project, based at the institute's Palmerston North campus, aimed to develop products that could be released slowly in livestock animals to help them digest more of the fibre they eat.

The project would also look for bacteria that fight off other bacteria.