CHARMME: Center for Harnessing Microbiota from Military Environments

Microbes pervade the world, on and within every vehicle, piece of equipment, infrastructure, including the most inhospitable environments. One surface can be teeming with complex consortia of 1,000s of bacterial and fungal species. Unlike sensitive laboratory strains, these organisms can persist for years under stressful conditions; for example, on the wall of an underground arctic facility, on the strap of a parachute or the side of a shipping container. This overall proposal focuses on developing the foundational technologies to recover, manipulate, prototype and replace microbes in military-relevant environments, such as permafrost, deserts, fields and coastal lands. Collectively, these capabilities enable the harnessing of engineered microbes as distributed biosensors detecting toxins, protect against corrosion, degrade military waste in-field, control terrain stability, provide architectural materials in resource-poor environments and living tag-and-track agents.