Periodic updates on life, mostly related to my research group and teaching at Caltech.
OGD Best Paper
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!
Geobiology Course, 2011
Well, the International Geobiology Course has wrapped up another successful year. This year we went to Yellowstone N.P. (and saw a really BIG grizzly bear), saw the Green River Formation in southern Wyoming, extracted DNA at the Colorado School of Mines, extracted lipids and other things at Caltech, and spent 10 days on Catalina at the Wrigley Marine Labs. All things considered, it was a huge success and everyone (at least the instructors) had a blast. Nobody got eaten by a bear. This year we "did lipids" again, but with a twist: we looked for hopanoids in the lipid extracts from mats, and for the biosynthetic genes in the DNA. While it was not quite an overwhelming success, we did find some of both -- look for an update from the course students at AGU. We're already looking forward to next year, so if you are interested in participating send me an email. Even better, send one to the course directors: Frank Corsetti at USC, and John Spear at Colorado School of Mines. And while you're at it, thank them for running such a spectacular summer course!