Geomicrobiology Group
Research Projects
Modern Extremophiles
One of our research focus is the exploration of microbial ecology, our projects include organisms living in evaporitic environments, hydrothermal settings, and Arctic warm spring.
By combining petrological, geochemical and molecular biology data we are searching for specific environmental parameters that are conditioning the character and distribution of the microbial communities inhabiting these extreme environments.
You may find more about our extremophile research on HERE
Precambrian and Cambrian Biosignatures
The occurrence of multicellular organisms on our planet is one of few major evolutionary steps in life emergence and diversification that clearly characterized our planet as habitable. We are investigating several locations that contain stromatolites and organismal fossils to study the preservation mode that could reveal more about the changing environment of the time, we will couple our paleobiological data to petrological data to find out specifics of what was the driving force of the major evolutionary step and how environmental character changed at the time.
You may find more about our ancient biosignature research HERE.
Evolution of Nanomachines In Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors
ENIGMA: Evolution of Nanomachines In Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors. This NAI team will explore catalysis of electron transfer reactions by prebiotic peptides to microbial ancestral enzymes to modern nanomachines, integrated over four and a half billion years of Earth’s changing geosphere. Theme 1 focuses on the synthesis and function of the earliest peptides capable of moving electrons on Earth and other planetary bodies. Theme 2 focuses on the evolutionary history of “motifs” in extant protein structures. Theme 3 focuses on how proteins and the geosphere co-evolved through geologic time.
More details you will find on ENIGMA website HERE , or on NASA Astrobiology Institue website HERE.