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Falmouth Academy Students Published in "Nature"
Microbiologist Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Edgcomb of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and Falmouth Academy part-time faculty member, along with two recent alumnae, Becca Cox ’18 and Sarah Lott ’18, and co-authors published a paper in the scientific journal Nature for their ground-breaking (quite literally) research identifying microbial life found deep beneath the ocean floor in the earth’s lower oceanic crust. In an interview for Science Alert Edgcomb remarked, “the lower ocean crust is one of the last frontiers of exploration for life on Earth."
Edgcomb was the team leader of this investigation and Cox and Lott worked in her lab after school and during the summer while students at Falmouth Academy, assisting with the extraction of DNA for those studies. “Nature is one of the top scientific journals," says Edgcomb. "This is a remarkable achievement for two young scientists who were high school students at the time of their contributions.”
Edgcomb’s team along with marine geo-microbiologist Jiangtao Li from Tongji University in China, biochemist Vivian Mara, and colleagues from the University of Bremen, Germany, Texas A&M, and the University of Brest in France analyzed samples from an undersea ridge in the Indian Ocean, the Atlantis Bank. The bank is situated along a fault zone which created ideal conditions for microbial life in the lower crust because the deep rocks are exposed to circulating fluids from above and below. This allows microbes to access vital nutrients. "We applied a completely new cocktail of methods to really try to explore these precious samples as intensively as we could," explained Edgecomb. Some of the microbes could store carbon in their cells while others could recycle different forms of carbon. This enhances our understanding of the potential scope of carbon cycling on Earth as well as its habitable biosphere.
Edgcomb’s team along with marine geo-microbiologist Jiangtao Li from Tongji University in China, biochemist Vivian Mara, and colleagues from the University of Bremen, Germany, Texas A&M, and the University of Brest in France analyzed samples from an undersea ridge in the Indian Ocean, the Atlantis Bank. The bank is situated along a fault zone which created ideal conditions for microbial life in the lower crust because the deep rocks are exposed to circulating fluids from above and below. This allows microbes to access vital nutrients. "We applied a completely new cocktail of methods to really try to explore these precious samples as intensively as we could," explained Edgecomb. Some of the microbes could store carbon in their cells while others could recycle different forms of carbon. This enhances our understanding of the potential scope of carbon cycling on Earth as well as its habitable biosphere.
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