The Birds and the Bees(Of Engineering)

During the record-breaking heat of the summer of 2010 in Brooklyn, a mystery captivated New York—beehives started producing red honey. Ultimately, the honey tested positive for Red No. 40, a food dye, and the culprit became clear—illegal dumping at a Red Hook maraschino cherry factory that turned out to be a front for a much more illegal marijuana grow operation.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hénaff’s reaction was different from that of most New Yorkers: “That seeded the idea that bees were collecting information about their environment beyond the pollen and sugar they collect,” she recalls. Hénaff, a microbiologist at TCS and CUSP, studies environmental microbiomes. Microorganisms are an “invisible but ubiquitous” part of city life, she says. They form a “layer” over the environment we see, sensing and interacting chemically with the world around us. Every element of the urban environment—from humans and dogs to trees and ponds—has its own microbial cloud, also called an aerobiome. By studying the urban microbiome and those clouds, scientists can extend their human senses to look at the city with “microbe eyes”—using bacteria and viruses as biological sensors.   

Read more at The Unconventional Engineer