Scion’s Lottie Armstrong is on the hunt for new soil micro-organisms to build understanding of life under the soil surface around the roots of radiata pine trees. At present, only a small percentage of the microbes living in the soil have been described, leaving many knowledge gaps about the role of microbes in the ecosystem.

Lottie receives a small amount of all the soil samples collected from all around New Zealand as part of the Tree Root Microbiome Programme. Focusing on less common and slower-growing species, she has developed a method to isolate individual micro-organisms, grow them on in the lab, and identify them. If they are thought to be new to science, the next challenge is to sequence their genome. By unpicking the genome, scientists can begin to understand the role of each micro-organism within the ecosystem.

Until recently, samples had to be sent to the USA for sequencing but a new tool – a Nanopore minION sequencer – has been purchased by Scion and is enabling the sequencing to be carried out in-house, quickly and cost-effectively. The lab programme can now be scaled up, and it is likely that many new organisms will be discovered, and their DNA be sequenced. Once the new genomes are announced in scientific literature, they can be added to international soil micro-organism databases, reinforcing the global benefits of the Tree Root Microbiome programme.