By Whet Moser
As I’ve written at some length before, the story of Chicago is one of a city lifting itself out of its own waste—from the raising of the city, to the tunnel system leading out to the distinctive water cribs on Lake Michigan, to the reversal of the river, to the epic Deep Tunnel project.
Running through the heart of it is the Chicago River, long an industrial artery-cum-sewer that’s being reinvented for a 21st-century role as a recreational amenity, reclaimed as the centerpiece of the riverwalk project and next year’s Great Fire festival.
But through all this time and effort, we don’t really know what’s in it…
…Jack Gilbert and Cristina Negri of Argonne are now embarking on a seven-year study of the Chicago River, investigating its dark taxa and how the components of its metagenome interact…
… Gilbert and Negri expect to keep an eye out for damaging microorganisms, as you’d expect—if the river is indeed going to grow as a place of recreation, targets will be the kinds of bad bacteria that cause skin or intestinal problems. But just as the study of the human biome is finding good organisms that can serve as a defense, Gilbert and Negri also expect to find organisms that could work towards remediation, rather than just those to be eliminated as a part of remediation.
‘The idea of microbial ecology is really not on people’s minds, normally,’ says Negri. ‘We’re taught that you have to get rid of germs—we’re told you should use disinfecting wipes to clean up your countertop, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a soil person, an agronomist, who works with plants and soil—and the first thing you learn is that life can occur because you have this interaction between organisms, feeding off each other. We’re at the cusp of discovering exactly how these interactions are actually useful for us…. You don’t just wage a war on the bad organisms, like we did before.’…