My Biogeochemistry Research | 3 Minute Thesis | Life in Environments with No Oxygen & No Light!
This is my White Endowment 2021 video submission: a 3 minute video summarizing my research and the importance (and awesomeness) of my research 'place', in my case, euxinic environments.
What do I research? Biogeochemistry.
What is biogeochemistry? In my case, it just means I study how bacteria (bio) affect rock formation (geo) and composition (chemistry).
In this talk, I discuss the ‘place’ where my research occurs.
Did you know that organisms could live without oxygen?
We, humans, need oxygen to breathe, but there are many organisms that don’t require oxygen.
Many organisms inhabit what would be extremely hostile environments to humans, which brings me to the ‘place’ in which my research occurs.
It’s an environment rather than a geographical location.
Euxinic environments. These are aquatic environments where oxygen is absent and sulfide is abundant. And the microbes that live in this environment, not only tolerate it, but actually maintain it. They eat sulfate and produce sulfide. These are the bacteria that I study.
So where can we find euxinic environments on Earth today? Well these bacteria hate oxygen, so they only live in the deep, dark corners of the ocean where oxygen is absent like the Black Sea for example.
However, on early Earth, before oxygen-producing organisms increased oxygen content, euxinic environments were all the rage.
By studying this oxygen-free period in Earth’s history, we can better understand the environmental evolution of Earth.
But why is it important to study Earth’s past to begin with?
There are many reasons this research is important, but in this talk, I discuss the two that I consider the most exiting and significant: climate and astrobiology.
First, climate. Climate change is a huge issue right now. But how do we know Earth is warming? And how do we predict future climate trends? We can’t take future measurements, so we take past measurements. And the further back our data goes, the better our predictions become.
How do we know environmental conditions from before humans we around to measure them? Rocks. Rocks preserve chemical, biological, and physical signatures that can tell us about the environment they formed in.
The second reason, Astrobiology, is exactly what it sounds like: biology in space! And I’m not saying we’ve already found evidence for biology in space, but studying astrobiology will help us get there. And because many potentially inhabited planets and moons have oceans and negligible oxygen, euxinic environments on Earth are perfect analogues for the extraterrestrial environments in which we may find life.
So now we’ve established that this research is important, but how do we study these environments? We can study euxinic environments on modern Earth by analyzing sediment or lab synthesized precipitates. We can study euxinic environments on ancient Earth by analyzing rocks. But what are we looking for when we analyze the chemistry of these rocks or lab synthesized precipitates?
For my research, I look for trace metal signatures because the amount and type of these metals in a particular rock we can tell whether that rock formed in a euxinic environment or not. And if we do this with enough rocks from enough locations and times throughout Earth’s history, we can create a pretty clear picture of how the timing and extent of euxinic environments has evolved on our planet.
As a final point (and to hopefully inspire some of you to go into this field of research), I want to emphasize how lucky I am that the ‘place’ I get to study is present on not only modern Earth, but also ancient Earth, and likely even extraterrestrial worlds!
Image sources:
https://wallpapercave.com/wp/TLMxhBP.jpg
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http://tachyonbeam.com/wp-content/upl...
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All images used in this presentation are shared under creative common licenses.
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