Microbial Ecology

The research interests of Dr. Tom Benoit lie in the fields of biopesticides and bioremediation, both of which provide environmentally sound approaches to the problem of xenobiotic molecules in the environment. Bacillus thuringiensis is a bacterial biopesticide which has been used successfully for decades to control certain crop insect pests. The toxin produced by this bacterium is well understood, however the organism's ecology is not. Collaborators and I have shown that the toxin, which can be found as a crystalline structure and as part of the coat of B.t.'s spores, imparts an adaptive trait to the spores which may assist them in infecting host insects. Future work will be aimed at detecting variations in this adaptive property according to whether the organism is grown in soil (one part of its niche) or the insect (the other part of its niche). With respect to bioremediation, students and I have isolated and characterized a wide array of petroleum-degrading bacteria from a natural crude oil seep located at the site of the first producing oil well in Texas. This seep has been present for at least several hundreds of years during which time the bacteria developed their capabilities to utilize hydrocarbons. We are interested in looking for common genetic sequences in the pathways of degradation in these organisms for the purpose of telling if they might share common genes. Field applications of these unique organisms are planned.