Category Archives: Microbes

Extreme Environmental Sampling Wanted

Stopping on the road, I venture over the railing, walking down the embankment. The heat at the waters edge overwhelms me. The smell of salt and bitterness is in the air.

It will be exciting to investigate what microbial communities inhabit these salt flats. Continue reading

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Scientific Sleuthing

At hand I have a set of known microbial metabolic pathways, a pretty good idea of what some of the intermediate and products are, a lot of chemistry knowledge, and a whole slew of really cool high tech tools. Continue reading

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Thankful for being able to do what it is that I do …

I get this look of fear and awe when I explain that the things I study grow at 100-200 atmospheres, at temperatures between 50-75 degreed centigrade, and under acidic conditions so extreme it would peel the skin off your bones. Like I said, this is pretty cool stuff Continue reading

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Thermoplasma acidophilum -a model organism to study iron stress in microbes?

How does T. acidophilum manage the high concentrations of soluble iron, or other metals, liberated by its acidic environment? Continue reading

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Boston Bacterial Meeting

I spent the last two days attending the Boston Bacterial Meeting (BBM) held at Harvard.  It was a great time to talk to old friends and to get to know some new ones.  The BBM is a small meeting held … Continue reading

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Life under high pressure – the setup

It was only recently that we began to understand the capacity of microbes to populate the most inhospitable places on earth.  From the inside of nuclear reactors to highly corrosive sulfur environments, microbes are there.   We have found them … Continue reading

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