Fieldstone Bio, a new startup launched in 2023, is changing the game for environmental monitoring. They’ve adapted gene-edited microbial sensors to detect hazardous substances such as TNT and arsenic. That journey began in Professor Chris Voigt’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, scientists pioneered ways of engineering microbes such that they can serve as sophisticated sensors that respond to and report even the subtlest change in conditions.
Tim De Chant, a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch and lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, has been closely following the developments in climate technologies. He pointed to the power that innovations like these can have on the future of environmental journalism and reporting more broadly. De Chant received his PhD in environmental science, policy and management from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, he completed the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT. For the year of this fellowship, he split his time between studying journalism’s new business models and learning about the burgeoning field of climate tech.
Fieldstone Bio’s cutting edge approach starts with isolating microbes from the environments that they want to able to monitor. This approach permits custom, yet highly sensitive, in situ sensing capabilities that are dependent on the ecological environment of the microbes themselves. To reduce costs, the company uses drones outfitted with hyperspectral cameras to collect imagery of the areas under surveillance. These dual-band cameras separate visible and infrared light to create up to 600 distinct colors. This high-resolution, 3D imaging greatly enhances their ability to detect.
Brandon Fields, a representative from Fieldstone Bio, highlighted the advantages of using artificial intelligence to analyze the data collected from these microbial sensors.
“That’s where the power of AI comes in, because we can start using that information to tease out these really faint signals to produce really cool heat maps of the microbe sensing the environment,” said Fields.
And by relying on these new, powerful sensors, the need for more invasive or cumbersome methods of environmental assessment is greatly diminished. As Patrick Stone, another member of the design team, explained,
“Instead of going to do core soil samples over every 100 feet — and then you have 100 foot resolution — we could get a one-inch resolution and really map out exactly where they need to go clean up stuff.”
Fieldstone Bio is employing new, highly-precise microbial sensing and imaging techniques. Their mission is to fill the voids in environmental monitoring that have historically hampered efforts by both scientists and policymakers. This innovative technology has drawn interest from regulatory bodies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as the company collaborates to ensure compliance with all necessary regulations.
Fields elaborated on the microbial capabilities stating,
“They’ve evolved to sense and respond to information. It’s just trillions of calculations going on at all times all around us.”
He further discussed the long-term vision for these technologies, saying,
“How do we take that and actually manipulate that to gain benefits for us? Eventually, you don’t need to apply the microbe at all.”
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