Reed admins, better prepare those golden parachutes now, and also be prepared to have your institution sued back to the stone-age, not to mention to go down in infamy as the mindless twerps who heedlessly destroyed the whole civilized world.
Just THINK: when you invent something that reduces plastics to goo - it will do the same thing to ALL petroleum derivatives such as - airplane fuel. So when your cars won't start in the winter, diesel generators can't provide electricity to states and cities, and planes fall from the skies, you can keep on praising this moron for "saving the planet," just like Saint Greta.
Morgan Vague ’18
Non-trad bio major developed a strain of bacteria that can actually eat plastic bottles.
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Thesis adviser: Prof. Jay Mellies [biology 1999–]
Thesis: Plastic Pollution and Bacterial Solutions.
What it's about: I gathered soil samples from polluted sites in Texas and isolated three novel bacterial consortia with the ability to colonize and degrade PET plastic (the big bad plastic used for bottled water).
What it’s really about: Plastic-eating bacteria and how we can use them to combat plastic pollution!
First day of class: I was both excited and terrified.
Cool stuff: Every biology class I ever took, including intro! Spanish and German House conversation groups, climbing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Student groups/clubs/activities: Women’s rugby, Reed Mixed Martial Arts club.
Obstacles I have overcome: I transferred to Reed from Houston Community College and entered as a nontraditional 22-year-old freshman. My hands shake but I can still do dissections and load protein gels with the best of them.
Influential book: One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick. Lt. Fick’s biography taught me valuable lessons about leadership and keeping a cool head during the most pressure-filled situations, which served me well during my time at Reed.
Concept that blew my mind: Microbiological evolution and gene expression. It’s a really beautiful, awe-inspiring, and terrifying topic!
Favorite professors: In Microbiology, Immunology, and the Human Microbiome, Prof. Jay Mellies is so enthusiastic and approachable about his subject. His classes literally changed my life and set me on my current research path. Prof. Iliana Alcántar [Spanish 2007–17] is hilarious, passionate, and she uses a blend of music, media, and modern authors to bring the subject to life. Even though I never took a proper class with Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012–], she always makes time to talk me through and offer advice on my experiments. Prof. Suzy Renn [biology 2006–] helped me navigate the bio major path.
How Reed changed me: I never thought I’d major in a STEM field or pursue research, and I blame intro bio for planting the wonderful science seed in my head.
Awards, fellowships, grants: Financial Services Fellowship, faculty commendation for junior qual performance, commendations for academic performance: 2016, 2017, 2018, Stafford Post-Bac Fellowship Award; Betty Liu Summer Research Fellowship.
Desired superpower: Flight.
Actual superpower: Wastebasket-ball.
Pet peeve: Mean people.
What’s next: Medical school or graduate school.
From THE OREGONIAN:
Reed senior makes 'watershed' discovery of potential pollution-fighting bacteria
Updated Jan 30, 2019;Posted Jun 19, 2018
Microscopic bacteria are seen forming colonies on polyethylene terephthalate. (Courtesy/Claudia S. Lopez/OHSU)
Morgan Vague was speechless when she looked through the microscope.
For weeks the Reed College senior, who majored in biology, had been diligently checking her specimens hoping that she would see progress. On a Monday afternoon late last year, she saw it.
Three types of bacteria she had isolated and bred in the lab were beginning to consume one of the most ubiquitous pollutants out there, polyethylene terephthalate.
"I got really quiet," Vague said of the day she made the discovery, "and then I squealed a little bit. And then I called my mom."
Polyethylene terephthalates, commonly known as PET, is in a ton of consumer goods, from plastic bottles to clothes to food packaging. The material takes decades, if not longer, to degrade in the environment and is a significant contributor to pollution worldwide, especially in the ocean where some so-called "garbage patches" have reached gargantuan proportions.
That's what led Vague to start researching ways to combat the scourge of PET pollution. A native of Houston, Texas, she collected samples of soil, sand and water from around Galveston Bay, near her hometown, which she knew were heavily polluted with petroleum. She was working off the theory that, in places with high levels of petroleum pollution, there were likely to be microbes that had evolved to consume it.
She snuck the samples back to Portland in her carry-on luggage and began isolating individual microbes to see if they produced lipase, a chemical that breaks down plastic into material that can be consumed by bacteria. Of the roughly 300 she had, 20 had the ability to produce the important material.
She picked the three with the highest lipase-producing potential and gave them polyethylene terephthalate as their only option to eat.
All three — Pseudomonas putida, Bacillus cereus and another unknown strain Vague is calling Pseudomonas morganensis, as she appears to be the first researcher to identify it — began feasting on the plastic. It was a novel discovery, especially for an undergraduate, said Jay Mellies, a biology professor at Reed and Vague's supervisor on her thesis project.
"This is a watershed moment," he said.
Mellies pointed out that the bacteria Vague isolated occurred naturally, so there's no risk of them getting loose and consuming plastics they aren't supposed to. He also noted that a lot of research still needed to be done before they could be deployed to start eating pollutants outside of a lab.
Over the summer, Vague said she'd be looking into ways to speed up the process and see if it could be scaled up to meet industrial needs, while also looking into graduate school applications. Still, her discovery marks a high point in her time at Reed.
"To go through this long, arduous process and then to see something novel," she said. "It was so exciting."
-- Kale Williams
kwilliams@oregonian.com
503-294-4048
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