Nitrogen and Sulfur Cycling on the Early Earth
As part of the Anderson lab group at Carleton College, I worked on various projects that use publicly available genomes to learn about microbes on the early earth. We recently wrapped up a project where we examined the history of various genes required for nitrogen cycling using bioinformatic methods. We are now investigating sulfur cycling genes to determine when certain metabolisms were particularly advantageous in the history of the early Earth. The findings of these studies may have implications for finding extraterrestrial life, and this work is done in cooperation with the Virtual Planetary Lab at UW.
Sulfur Biogeochemical Cycling by Shewanella BF02
I was part of the Fort Johnson REU program at the College of Charleston during the summer of 2019. I worked with Dr. Peter Lee at the Hollings Marine Laboratory, focusing on a strain of Shewanella isolated from the outflow of Blood Falls, Antarctica. I was broadly interested in the potential roles of Shewanella in the sulfur cycle. I found evidence that Shewanella is able to produce volatile organic sulfur compounds important in global temperature regulation and that Shewanella preferentially coupled specific sulfur sources with iron redox cycling.
Thorium Isotope Analysis Optimization
During my Study Abroad in Australia, I completed my Independent Study Project (ISP) at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), under the guidance of Prof. Zanna Chase and Dr. Axel Durand. I spent around a month in the sediment lab, attempting to uncover why thorium and uranium yields from sediment were so low, according to ICP-MS analysis. Despite our valiant attempts, I was unable to find any pretreatment that appreciably improved the yields.