I am an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, and this year I’ll be collecting microbialite samples, to figure out how the microscopic species living on the microbialites vary throughout the lake. Currently I’m working in a lab in the Department of Marine Science at UNC with Andreas Teske and Jen Biddle, where I study the genetic diversity of microbes living around a deep-sea hydrothermal vent site near Guaymas, Mexico. Even though Pavilion Lake is a very different environment, I’ll be using many of the same techniques to study the microbial life in Pavilion Lake as I do to study the microbes living in mud almost 3,000 meters below the surface of the ocean.
My background is in molecular biology, so to study the diversity of the microbialites’ microbes, Jen and I will extract their DNA and RNA, and then determine the sequences of particular genes that they code for. If you need a quick crash course in molecular biology: DNA is a molecule made up of four different types of subunits (called A, T, G and C for short), which are repeated and reordered to form a long chain. The particular order of these subunits stores the genetic information for all life forms, much like different combinations of letters spell out different words. Genes that are “switched on” write the words that code for RNA, a molecule which in turn gets translated into proteins. By looking at the differences between these sequences, we can gain some insight into what types of organisms they are, and how closely related they are. It would be very cool if we find differences in the microbes associated with different types of microbialites!
The DNA and RNA of a biological sample degrade quickly, so you have to preserve it if you want to be able to study it back home in your lab. Often samples are frozen at –80 degrees, or in liquid Nitrogen, in order to preserve their genetic information for future analysis. But it can be difficult to freeze samples like this, and safely ship them back to your lab when you are out doing field research. Instead, I’ll be using a salty solution to preserve the RNA in the microbialite samples I take. Field work is a fun challenge, because you have to be so prepared ahead of time! Everyone with the Pavilion Lake Research Project has been working hard for months already to make sure we’re ready for anything at the lake.
While there is barely a week left I leave for Pavilion Lake, I’m currently attending a course on astrobiology in Spain. The students are all young (mostly in graduate school, or recent PhDs), and it’s wonderful to witness the beginnings of collaborations between young scientists. I think astrobiology is especially conducive to collaboration, because it’s so interdisciplinary, and field projects like PLRP are no exception.
I can’t wait to see everyone at Pavilion Lake!
~Zena
Zena behind a mammoth-sized stack of clone libraries
