I am so excited to welcome Dr. Tuesday Simmons to Metal Dog Labs and SFTW for a new monthly series focused on the soil microbiome. The series will run for a few months. Please do not hesitate to send me your feedback -Rhishi
Over the next few months, Dr. Tuesday Simmons will be sharing her perspective on the importance of the soil microbiome to agriculture and the development of new technologies. Starting off with an introduction to the microscopic life inhabiting cropland soils, together we’ll explore the integral role these creatures play in nutrient cycling and soil structure, the relationships they have with plants, how they impact soil health, and what this all means for farming practices and the rapidly growing biological product market.
Bio: Dr. Tuesday Simmons earned a PhD in microbiology from the University of California, Berkeley for research into the effects of drought on cereal crop microbiomes. Post-graduate school, she has worked for start-up companies in R&D, sales, and marketing roles with the goal of effectively communicating the value of cutting-edge biotechnology. As an Application Scientist at Isolation Bio, she worked with leading gut microbiome researchers to improve high-throughput microbial isolation for academic and pharmaceutical purposes. At Root Applied Sciences and Trace Genomics, she has worked to leverage microbiome research for farmers and agronomists. Since 2024, she has worked as a freelance science writer and consultant.
Soil Microbes are Feeding the World
Every ecosystem on our planet is impacted by microorganisms (aka microbes), and the soil in which we grow our food is no exception. The role microbes play in crop growth is exceedingly underappreciated, and I hope to bolster awareness and appreciation for our microscopic allies in my series of posts here on Software is Feeding the World.
Over the next few months, we’ll dig into (pun intended) the soil microbiome, its importance in nutrient cycling and soil structure, the relationships between microbes and plants, and the role microbes are playing in today’s agricultural product market.
Soil microbiome: the diverse community of microorganisms that live in the soil.
Soil: The Final Frontier
Contrary to statements made by a certain multibillion dollar media franchise, it is this microbiologist’s opinion that soil is the final frontier, not space. In the past decade, we have just begun to scratch the surface into the importance of the soil microbiome. While the individual components of soil (minerals, water, air, organic matter, and microorganisms) might seem simple on the surface, the interactions between each of these components and with soil-dwelling macroorganisms like plants and insects are incredibly convoluted.
Like our gut microbiome, the soil environment is teeming with microbial life. Unlike our guts, the complexity of the soil microbiome is largely undiscovered.
While your gut microbiome might contain ~3,000 bacterial species (1), a teaspoon of soil can have 50,000 species (or more) (2). Additionally, around 90% of gut microbes can be cultured (grown in a lab) (1), while (at best) less than 3% of soil microbes can be cultured (3). The remaining ~97% of soil microbes are referred to as “microbial dark matter”.
Historically, the field of microbiology has been dependent on growing microbes in a lab in order to study and identify them, but the development of sequencing technologies has opened up a new window into the soil ecosystem.