Professor applies knowledge to environmental problems

A father’s sudden illness dashes his son’s hope to better himself. A chance encounter produces an unexpected benefactor. The young man travels widely and finds professional success. Will he see the reclusive benefactor again?

Add a few subplots and it sounds like a Dickensian tale. But that’s not even close. This story happened to Glenn Chambliss, who grew up outside Jasper, Texas.

Chambliss chairs the Department of Bacteriology. He’s working with colleagues there and in two other departments to develop a new building that will be the hub of microbiology on campus. Chambliss also pursues his study of bacteria that may help locate unexploded land mines and clean up toxic contaminants.

His career found its beginnings back in Jasper, the biggest community in the piney woods of East Texas. As a high school senior, Chambliss hoped to study engineering in college, but his family had little money to spare. When his dad was diagnosed with cancer, Chambliss’ hopes for college evaporated. His father died within a year.

Enter Sam Young, a distant relative who had stopped to visit Chambliss’ grandmother. Young took Chambliss fishing.

“In his tackle box I saw the most beautiful fishing reels I’d ever seen,” Chambliss recalls. “But the fishing lines were all tangled. So I spent part of the time unsnarling the lines.”

Later, Young offered to loan Chambliss the money he needed for college. Chambliss decided to become a pre-med major at the University of Texas. That decision held until he took his first microbiology course.

“That course set me afire,” Chambliss says. It also set him on a career path that led to a doctorate at the University of Chicago and a post-doc at the University of Paris.

Chambliss became an expert on the physiology of Bacillus subtilus, a workhorse in industrial microbiology. He continued studying the microbe after arriving at the UW–Madison in 1974.

The self-described “country boy,” who once hunted the piney woods, is now a bird watcher and camper. In Madison, Chambliss and his wife Diane Derouen have been active in the Madison Audubon Society. He served on the board of directors, chaired the Goose Pond committee and became president of the group in the 1980s. The couple often retreat to property in rural Grant County where they are restoring prairie and oak savanna habitats.

This past decade, Chambliss has combined his knowledge of bacteria with his environmental values. He’s looking for bacteria that could help clean up environmental pollutants.

“We’ve soiled our nest with some exotic and dangerous chemicals,” says Chambliss. For example, there are an estimated 10,000 U.S. sites contaminated with explosives and related compounds. He doesn’t like the methods used to clean up such sites. Those methods often require that contaminated soil be excavated, hauled away and incinerated. Chambliss believes that bacteria can degrade the pollution in place without leaving behind a scarred landscape and sterile soil. He and a team of bacteriologists, biochemists and environmental engineers, recently identified bacteria that can take the initial step in breaking down TNT.

Even more dangerous than environmental contaminants are undetected land mines that kill innocent civilians long after wars are over. Many are plastic mines, which are more difficult to detect than metal mines.

“Because plastic mines often leak TNT, we hope to find a way to use bacteria to reveal the location of unexploded mines before they kill anyone,” says Chambliss. He has developed and patented a bioassay for detecting TNT. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation licensed the method to a North Carolina company, and Chambliss is working with the company to increase the method’s sensitivity.

Along with all biotechnology-related disciplines, microbiology is undergoing a renaissance today. New techniques allow scientists to study an enormous number of previously unknown microbes, including many with the potential to enhance the quality of our lives.

This renaissance underscores the value of the new microbial sciences building, which will bring together faculty from the departments of Food Microbiology and Toxicology, Medical Microbiology and Immunology, and Bacteriology. A major problem for microbiologists here is that they are scattered across campus, many in outdated facilities.

“The new building will help build stronger ties among microbiologists from the ag college, the med school and other groups across campus,” Chambliss says.

Chambliss is well aware that he probably wouldn’t ever be setting foot in that new building without his long-ago benefactor’s help. “I’d probably have learned a trade in the military, like my brother did, and returned to Jasper. That’s where he and my two sisters live today,” he says.

And what of the benefactor? Chambliss wrote letters to Young and paid back his loan in $25 installments. He tried to set up meetings with Young. But Chambliss never again met the man who changed his life.