In the midst of severe drawbacks on federal funding, scientists still came together, impelled by the significance of their work and the unquenchable search for knowledge. There are many such accounts of tenacity and discovery, and this one emerged from a makeshift motel room lab, where another piece of the story of life was brought into the light.
Rutgers PhD graduate Dr. Julia Van Etten and RCEI Affiliate Debashish Bhattacharya are featured in a New York Times article where Etten’s research stands out front and center. In collaboration with other scientists, such as Dr. Andrew Willoughby from Duke University and Dr. John Burns from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Dr. Etten used a microscope, mouth pipettes, and “steampunk” tools composed of colored pencils and twine to isolate two new species of a particularly special single-celled organism, Paulinella.
What makes Paulinella so special is a unique process of evolution that has displayed itself within the species and has only ever been observed in one other portion of natural history – the beginning of photosynthetic life 1.5 billion years ago, a point from which almost all other complex photosynthesizers developed. With the total number of known Paulinella species now adding up to 6, scientists can gain even more insight into that ancient moment and correspondingly, the origins of life on earth.
Read more at the full article published by New York Times.
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