the scientists we often go to some of
the most extreme places on our planet to
collect microbes bring them back
understand what they’re doing and how
they work these types of organisms can
actually broaden our search for life
beyond Earth by knowing what microbes
are capable of we can think about other
places where this could become a little
over a year ago I found myself camping
on the side of an active volcano I was
there as the chief scientist of an
expedition that went to examine
Vanuatu’s mahram crater and it was
unlike any other camping experience I’d
ever had right outside your tent window
there was constantly a plume of toxic
sulfur dioxide you had to go with the
respirator whenever you went outside it
was also smart to wear long sleeves
there are tiny microscopic basaltic
needles that would fall down upon you
and when the rain was water it was acid
had a pH of about 2 despite all these
hazards it actually turns out that
microbes can survive in these places and
we were there to figure out why we were
there for this this is the crater it’s
about a kilometer across 500 meters deep
and at the very bottom of it in this pit
of roiling lava is the world’s most
active lava lake we needed to get
samples from the very bottom to
understand how microbes can survive so
we descended down the cliff when it’s
close to the edge of the lava lake as we
dared all around us lava was spewing
sometimes going over the top of our
heads raining down upon us it wasn’t a
great place to be for a very long time
but we were there just long enough to
get our critical samples this is a place
where the earth is forming this is how
rocks come to be they are formed by
volcanoes and everywhere on the surface
of the planet microbes inhabit these
rocks we wanted to see how this started
we collected samples that were 30
seconds old we saw them pop up they were
glowing red they finally cooled off we
picked him up and we got a full time
series across days weeks months years
across the island to figure out when
microbes colonize these rocks what that
means in terms of a longer-term
succession of microbial community inside
these rocks and how that influences
elemental cycles
on our planet so volcanoes are enormous
planetary scale loud very obvious
features but they actually create these
tiny micro niches that allow for
distinct forms of life to exist and as a
geobiologist my interest is in these
interfaces it’s kind of where these
planetary scale processes meet on the
micro scale places like this have been
found all over the world and microbes
typically find a way to survive there
are organisms in the Rio Tinto in
southwestern Spain that can breathe
metal and create these Civic pools of
blood-red water the minerals that are
formed here are actually found on Mars
as well recently off the coast of Japan
two and a half kilometers deep below the
surface of the ocean
there are methane producing microbes
this is a whole different class of
organism these are the interests really
being inside our planet and the lower
temperature limit of life is still
completely unknown microbes can survive
inside ice down to negative 20 degrees
Celsius and probably even cooler and
combined these forces really come
together to operate our planet we’re on
in microbial world let’s all just get
used to it these microbes create more
than half of the oxygen that we breathe
they mobilize the nutrients that
supports any sort of macroscopic life
and on my quest to understand what the
limits of this biology is I focus on the
deep sea we can think of the earth as a
battery in the subsurface in those
liquids and in those gases those
chemicals are said to be reduced there
are a lot of electrons on the very thin
rind of the planet that we operate in
the atmosphere the surface world the
ocean that’s said to be oxidized so
where these places meet this pull and
these these boundaries of the battery
that’s where energy can be harvested so
the deep sea is our best opportunity to
find new types of metabolism and there
are sort of three canonical categories
over the last few decades that have been
carved out within this deep sea realm
black smoker hydrothermal vents are
precipitating these metal sulphides
several hundred degrees Celsius the lost
city hydrothermal system forms from
water rock interactions no magma needed
and this creates an alkaline system that
leads to a whole different type of
microbes and methane seeps these are
places typically where one tectonic
plate is subducting beneath another one
in the organic goo
that had kind of fallen down on that
first plate is being broken down and
streaming up through the Earth’s surface
so these methane seeps are where I’ve
done most of my work you can see the
methane bubbles coming out not as
exciting as like smoker events on TV
perhaps but more important because
they’re able to turn that methane into
Rock might be the most important thermo
regulators on the planet
methane is a extremely strong greenhouse
gas so by soaking it up into this rock
we can do a lot of good they’re kind of
those three main flavors of deep-sea
chemosynthetic oases that I described
but we’re already sensing that there are
other flavors as well recently in the
mid came in trough the deepest and
hottest hydrothermal vent had ever been
discovered and off the coast of
Antarctica this carpet of Yeti crabs was
found around hydrothermal vents these
crabs harvest bacteria on their gills
and eat those it’s the microbes though
that are making the food in the first
place from the chemists chemicals in the
vents nonetheless most of the deep-sea
looks like this to us we have no idea
what’s going on
that’s because less than 0.01% of the
deep sea has ever been seen by human
eyes this is the equivalent of Lewis and
Clark setting out on their journey 1804
they leave their fort on the banks of
the Missouri River they walk about a
half mile to their canoes but instead of
getting in those canoes exploring the
rest of the continent seeing bison
seeing Yellowstone and cantering new
cultures seeing the Rockies seeing a
whole nother ocean they spend the rest
of their lives walking about 1/2 mile
and studying that so why do we really
care about microbes what does it mean to
expand the realm of metabolic
possibility from a very practical
perspective we can do a lot of good the
project I’m working on right now is
taking these deep-sea methane eating
metabolism and trying to import it into
e.coli through genetic means to turn
methane into a biofuel the drugs and bio
technologies of the future will most
likely come from the deep sea or from
the massive realm of untapped genetic
potential in microbes around the world
by understanding the vast realm of
possibility of microbiology we’re also
expanding the realm of potentially
habitable worlds beyond our planet
so other calculations that that our team
had worked on showed that the methane
eating metabolism we see in the deep-sea
would have actually been energetically
possible on Mars in the ancient past
when there was water but to me most
fundamentally this search is really
getting to the center of what life is
all about what is this crazy magical
process that moves electrons around and
ends up creating these self-sustaining
self-replicating cells and ultimately
leads to civilization and culture
there’s so much more to get to and we’re
really just starting this journey I
can’t wait to see what we find
thank you
you
the most extreme places on our planet to
collect microbes bring them back
understand what they’re doing and how
they work these types of organisms can
actually broaden our search for life
beyond Earth by knowing what microbes
are capable of we can think about other
places where this could become a little
over a year ago I found myself camping
on the side of an active volcano I was
there as the chief scientist of an
expedition that went to examine
Vanuatu’s mahram crater and it was
unlike any other camping experience I’d
ever had right outside your tent window
there was constantly a plume of toxic
sulfur dioxide you had to go with the
respirator whenever you went outside it
was also smart to wear long sleeves
there are tiny microscopic basaltic
needles that would fall down upon you
and when the rain was water it was acid
had a pH of about 2 despite all these
hazards it actually turns out that
microbes can survive in these places and
we were there to figure out why we were
there for this this is the crater it’s
about a kilometer across 500 meters deep
and at the very bottom of it in this pit
of roiling lava is the world’s most
active lava lake we needed to get
samples from the very bottom to
understand how microbes can survive so
we descended down the cliff when it’s
close to the edge of the lava lake as we
dared all around us lava was spewing
sometimes going over the top of our
heads raining down upon us it wasn’t a
great place to be for a very long time
but we were there just long enough to
get our critical samples this is a place
where the earth is forming this is how
rocks come to be they are formed by
volcanoes and everywhere on the surface
of the planet microbes inhabit these
rocks we wanted to see how this started
we collected samples that were 30
seconds old we saw them pop up they were
glowing red they finally cooled off we
picked him up and we got a full time
series across days weeks months years
across the island to figure out when
microbes colonize these rocks what that
means in terms of a longer-term
succession of microbial community inside
these rocks and how that influences
elemental cycles
on our planet so volcanoes are enormous
planetary scale loud very obvious
features but they actually create these
tiny micro niches that allow for
distinct forms of life to exist and as a
geobiologist my interest is in these
interfaces it’s kind of where these
planetary scale processes meet on the
micro scale places like this have been
found all over the world and microbes
typically find a way to survive there
are organisms in the Rio Tinto in
southwestern Spain that can breathe
metal and create these Civic pools of
blood-red water the minerals that are
formed here are actually found on Mars
as well recently off the coast of Japan
two and a half kilometers deep below the
surface of the ocean
there are methane producing microbes
this is a whole different class of
organism these are the interests really
being inside our planet and the lower
temperature limit of life is still
completely unknown microbes can survive
inside ice down to negative 20 degrees
Celsius and probably even cooler and
combined these forces really come
together to operate our planet we’re on
in microbial world let’s all just get
used to it these microbes create more
than half of the oxygen that we breathe
they mobilize the nutrients that
supports any sort of macroscopic life
and on my quest to understand what the
limits of this biology is I focus on the
deep sea we can think of the earth as a
battery in the subsurface in those
liquids and in those gases those
chemicals are said to be reduced there
are a lot of electrons on the very thin
rind of the planet that we operate in
the atmosphere the surface world the
ocean that’s said to be oxidized so
where these places meet this pull and
these these boundaries of the battery
that’s where energy can be harvested so
the deep sea is our best opportunity to
find new types of metabolism and there
are sort of three canonical categories
over the last few decades that have been
carved out within this deep sea realm
black smoker hydrothermal vents are
precipitating these metal sulphides
several hundred degrees Celsius the lost
city hydrothermal system forms from
water rock interactions no magma needed
and this creates an alkaline system that
leads to a whole different type of
microbes and methane seeps these are
places typically where one tectonic
plate is subducting beneath another one
in the organic goo
that had kind of fallen down on that
first plate is being broken down and
streaming up through the Earth’s surface
so these methane seeps are where I’ve
done most of my work you can see the
methane bubbles coming out not as
exciting as like smoker events on TV
perhaps but more important because
they’re able to turn that methane into
Rock might be the most important thermo
regulators on the planet
methane is a extremely strong greenhouse
gas so by soaking it up into this rock
we can do a lot of good they’re kind of
those three main flavors of deep-sea
chemosynthetic oases that I described
but we’re already sensing that there are
other flavors as well recently in the
mid came in trough the deepest and
hottest hydrothermal vent had ever been
discovered and off the coast of
Antarctica this carpet of Yeti crabs was
found around hydrothermal vents these
crabs harvest bacteria on their gills
and eat those it’s the microbes though
that are making the food in the first
place from the chemists chemicals in the
vents nonetheless most of the deep-sea
looks like this to us we have no idea
what’s going on
that’s because less than 0.01% of the
deep sea has ever been seen by human
eyes this is the equivalent of Lewis and
Clark setting out on their journey 1804
they leave their fort on the banks of
the Missouri River they walk about a
half mile to their canoes but instead of
getting in those canoes exploring the
rest of the continent seeing bison
seeing Yellowstone and cantering new
cultures seeing the Rockies seeing a
whole nother ocean they spend the rest
of their lives walking about 1/2 mile
and studying that so why do we really
care about microbes what does it mean to
expand the realm of metabolic
possibility from a very practical
perspective we can do a lot of good the
project I’m working on right now is
taking these deep-sea methane eating
metabolism and trying to import it into
e.coli through genetic means to turn
methane into a biofuel the drugs and bio
technologies of the future will most
likely come from the deep sea or from
the massive realm of untapped genetic
potential in microbes around the world
by understanding the vast realm of
possibility of microbiology we’re also
expanding the realm of potentially
habitable worlds beyond our planet
so other calculations that that our team
had worked on showed that the methane
eating metabolism we see in the deep-sea
would have actually been energetically
possible on Mars in the ancient past
when there was water but to me most
fundamentally this search is really
getting to the center of what life is
all about what is this crazy magical
process that moves electrons around and
ends up creating these self-sustaining
self-replicating cells and ultimately
leads to civilization and culture
there’s so much more to get to and we’re
really just starting this journey I
can’t wait to see what we find
thank you
you
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