As you might recall, Methuselah Foundation research volunteer John Schloendorn requested soil donations throughout 2006, in order to discover microbes that degrade "junk" molecules inside our bodies - the LysoSENS project. Further encouragement for the donors was provided by a soil contest - $100 for what the investigators deem the "best" submitted samples, i.e. the ones that contained the most biodiversity, and were the most difficult to collect. We were amazed at the level of creativity and organizational talent that our soil donors threw at this problem. We are proud to announce the winners of the contest and their stories.

The science:

7-ketocholesterol builds up in our arteries as we age, and is a major troublemaker in heart disease and stroke. Our bodies are very ineffective at removing 7-ketocholesterol once it is in the artery - but modern medicine and the tools of biotechnology aim to do better. 7-ketocholesterol is one example of a type of intracellular junk, one of the seven deadly types of age-related damage. Chemicals that our bodies cannot degrade or dispose of build up over the years, and interfere in the proper working of our bodies.

The discovery and characterization of microbes degrading 7-ketocholesterol was John's main objective - if a microbe comes equipped with the tools to degrade this chemical, then perhaps we can copy those tools for use in medical therapies. Last year, John found several microbes capable of degrading 7-ketocholesterol in samples submitted by our soil donors, and is now preparing the publication of these findings.

The winners:

5th place: Alexandra Molitor.
Alex travelled to Ecuador for vacation. While fighting a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitoes at a hot spring near Quito, she suddenly remembered LysoSENS. Lacking any sampling device, she stuffed its mud between two plastic cups, and mailed the assembly from a post office in the middle of nowhere. When it arrived in Tempe, everything was remarkably still in place. I cultured this samples against A2E at elevated temperature, which rapidly killed the A2E chemically, even in the sterile control. When I tried again at 37 degrees, again no luck.

4th place: Guy Bryant
Guy is a cave diver. He took two samples from an underwater cave in northern Florida. The samples where taken 2,200 feet from the entrance of the cave. In the process of making his way out of the cave, he lost one. We received the surviving sample and three others from a subsequent dive in another cave taken at the entrance sink and at different locations within the cave. I combined them and cultured against A2E in marine mineral medium, but had no luck.

3rd place: J. Lewis tightened his least favorite hiking sandals and went for an extended stroll in the muddiest, blackest swamp he could find in Fiji - getting his feet wet for science halfway across the world. Sealed in a bag folded and tied airtight with a hat-strap, the sandals and their swamp cargo returned to the US. J. Lewis, a Tempe local, brought the boots to Biodesign in person, where I happily scratched their precious cargo off. The samples will become part of our growing metagenomic DNA resources, and have not yet undergone selection.

2nd place: Scott Barton is the General Curator of the Tucson Reid Park Zoo. He donated fecal samples from a large selection of animals from all imaginable phyla and geographical regions. As far as I am aware, Scott is the only person on earth who climbed into a lion's cage for LysoSENS samples -- and lived! We found several slow 7-ketocholesterol degraders in these samples. However, since they could not compare with our Nocardias in terms of degradation speed and ease to work with, we did not pursue them further (yet).

And finally the grand winner: Congratulations, and $100 go to Michael Cooper!
Michael obtained the cooperation of several Kentucky funeral directors. This resulted in a large selection of deep grave samples from different graveyards. We used these to construct our first large (>3 Gbp) metagenomic clone library, which has not yet undergone selection. This experiment will hopefully provide an answer to the question whether graveyard soil is the preferred sample source, as a microbial habitat where our target compounds naturally get degraded. Mike would like to acknowledge the funeral directors Mr. Bernard, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Hamm.