Core Ideas Indianapolis soils show evidence of heavy metal contamination due to industrial legacy. Wood chip barriers with imported soil growing beds ameliorate contamination issues. Farming in imported or native soil improves soil nutrient and physical status. This work suggests a safe and productive method for urban farming in contaminated areas. Urban agriculture is growing rapidly in the United States and can combat food deserts and insecurity in metropolitan areas. However, urban farm soils are challenged by legacies of contamination and degradation. Heavy metal contaminated soil, lack of nutrients, and poor soil physical characteristics have led urban farmers in Indianapolis to a novel strategy of layering wood chips on top of background soil to create a barrier between contaminated or low quality soil and healthy growing media. We examined the small group of farms that have begun using this strategy to test if these barriers were effective at preventing soil contamination and improving soil health. We sampled farm soils using either barrier strategies with new imported soil or farming in native soil. Growing bed and background soils were analyzed for heavy metals, soil nutrients, and soil physical characteristics. Though the novelty of the method limited sample size, barrier strategies appeared to be effective at separating contaminated background soils from growing beds. Farming with either barriers or in non‐contaminated native urban soils increased soil nutrients and improved soil physical characteristics that support plant growth. In many growing beds, soil phosphorus was very high and posed a potential danger to local waterways. Though the number of sites is limited, these results indicate that barrier strategies are a potentially viable strategy to protect plants, farmers, and consumers from soil contaminants and that this barrier method should be examined in more depth for potential broader application in cities with legacies of soil contamination.

Metabolic G-protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). (A) Intramembrane access to the binding pocket of GPR40 (also known as free fatty acid receptor 1; PDB code: 4PHU). The binding pocket of GPR40 (grey) is covered by extracellular loop 2 (ECL2; cyan) preventing entry from the extracellular space. Instead the allosteric regulator, TAK-875 (pink), accesses the binding pocket through the plasma membrane. (B) Structural determination of the lysophosphatidic acid receptor (LPA 1 ; PDB code: 4Z34). LPA 1 was crystallized with a stabilizing Cytochrome b 562 RIL subunit (circled in orange) inserted into the third intracellular loop and with membrane lipids bound to help orient LPA 1 in the plasma membrane. (C) Pharmacological regulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGlu5; PDB code: 4OO9). Slab view of the allosteric binding site (allosteric regulator mavoglurant (red)) within the 7-transmembrane helices of mGlu5 (green).

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