I’m currently working on a paper about how bacteria survive in extreme low temperature and salty environments. One thing that bacteria do when faced with these stresses is to produce protective chemicals called compatible solutes. Some microbes not only produce these chemicals but can also break them down for food and energy. Right now i’m […]

Good (if somewhat old) news: my JGI Quarterly Community Sequencing Project proposal with Boz Wing was successful, so we will be getting complete genome sequences, plus transcriptomes, for 3 members of the Order Desulfobacterales that exhibit exceptionally large sulfur isotope fractionation effects (ε). Desulfobacula phenolica (ε = 37) Desulfospira joergensenii (ε = 26) Desulfotignum balticum […]

I’m in Atlanta, Georgia this week for AbSciCon 2012, one of my favorite scientific conferences. I’ve only missed one since my first in 2000 at NASA Ames, and over the years I’ve seen Astrobiologists evolve into a more confident, more mature community of scientists. This year I’m excited that there are more presentations on Science […]

I recently gave guest lectures in Jon Stone’s “Life in the Universe” course (2LU3) and in Paul Higgs’ “Genomes and Evolution” course (4Y03) at McMaster. For “Life in the Universe” I gave a general overview of the prospects for finding life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. For “Genomes and Evolution” I talked about […]

I’ve made a short video teaser for my upcoming talk at the IPY2012 conference in Montreal. Check it out! [It took me all day to find the right combination of tools to produce this simple video in Linux! First I tried making it as a presentation in OpenOffice Impress, exporting that as a swf video […]