• The Awards

    by Elio — The 2016 MacArthur awards have just been an­nounced. Among the hand­ful of sci­en­tists are two mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists, Di­anne New­man and Vic­to­ria Or­phan, both at Cal Tech and both ge­omi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists. We re­joice. Both are ex­tra­or­di­nary sci­en­tists with an un­usu­ally broad range of in­ter­ests.

  • Fat­ten­ing Up Mi­cro­bial Ge­o­log­i­cal Bio­mark­ers

    by Paula We­lander — First Evolved! Last Ex­tinct! This prokary­otic pride motto was coined by my un­der­grad­u­ate ad­vi­sor (and good friend) Prof. Mark Mar­tin. As a mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist, I love this motto for many rea­sons, but es­pe­cially be­cause it al­ludes to one of the un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of my cur­rent re­search. Mi­crobes were in­deed the first to evolve and the meta­bolic in­ven­tions...