We've just learned that our paper on "Identification of a methylase required for 2-methylhopanoid production..." has been selected as the Organic Geochemistry Division's 2010 Best Paper. Normally I would say this is not the kind of thing that should be boasted about on a website. But in this case I can take very little of the credit -- that goes to Paula Welander and Maureen Coleman, the two postdocs who did all the hard work on this paper. So congrat's to them. It is really a beautiful piece of work, and reports the existence of a single gene (at least in Rhodopseudomonas palustris) that governs synthesis of 2-methylhopanoids, a group of biomarker compounds that play a key part in our studies of life on the ancient Earth. They then go on to show that while that gene is present in many cyanobacteria, it is also present in many Proteobacteria as well. Thus we may have to think even harder about whether we should really attribute 2-methylhopanes from ancient rocks exclusively to cyanobacteria. Congratulations, Paula and Maureen!
Copyright 2011 by Alex Sessions. All rights reserved.