American Society for Microbiology General Meeting 2014

ASM always reminds me of a microbial cell. Huge and complex and full of incomprehensible activity. An endless array of posters and talks and stressed scientist running to get to just that one session in time. But somehow it all works and you leave with new ideas.

This time I was in luck since the meeting was in Boston. Not being jet lagged or trying to sleep in an overcrowded hostel made wonders for my spirits. I presented my Single Cell poster the second day and had the rest of the meeting free to interact with a convention center full of microbiologists.

The Archaea session was very good with personal heroes like Christa Schleper and Sonja Albers. It is a rare opportunity to hear all available archaeal model systems presented in one session.

Opening speaker Ove Hoegh-Guldberg reminded us of the importance of our work with a status report of coral reefs in a warming ocean. Seen in his TedTalk:

Rolf Bernander (1956–2014): pioneer of the archaeal cell cycle

To say goodbye to your friend and supervisor is hard, as is losing someone you had hoped would keep contributing to the field for years to come. I will always be grateful to Rolf for teaching me not only how to run a micro array and a flow cytometer, but also how to think like a scientist. One of the first thing Rolf told me is that he is not leaving students behind. He would stand by me all the way to the PhD - and he did.

Goodbye Rolf, and thanks for introducing me to the coolest group of organisms in the world.

Obituary in Molecular Microbiology

Outreach at Kahala high school

After the Ocean Sciences meeting I got an invitation to visit Kahala high school in Honolulu. They showed their after school program with an impressive array of projects, all of them with a practical application and most of them with a sustainable perspective. I was especially impressed by what they did with arduino computers. I was given the chance to give my archaea spiel to both students and teachers. Astrobiology. Hot springs. Origin of life. Prototype of eukaryotes. I think I made them suitably interested, and they certainly learned a bit of how modern biology works. If I'm really lucky I will meet one of them again on an oceanographic conference in the future.

Ocean Sciences meeting, Honolulu 2014

My first Ocean Sciences meeting was the largest of them all. 10000 strong at the conference center in Honolulu. I was there with the DeLong lab and gave a talk about my Single Cell Genomic study from the Aloha Station. It was daunting that my first dip of my toe in the waters of oceanography was in company of all the big fish of the field.

The keynote speaker was spectacular. Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey told us about her work to preserve the knowledge from indigenous people. With her upbringing in a traditional Hawaiian society and close study under one of the last Polynesian navigator priests, she has a very rare insight in how rich the knowledge is that is threatened to be lost forever. See her Ted talk here:

I also greatly enjoyed Roger Hanlon's plenary session on how not to be seen - cuttlefish style, as explain in his TedTalk here:

Why archaea?

Why study archaea? The answer is of course - why not? After getting acquainted with these lovely critters how could one just walk away? Archaea has the best sales pitch in the world. Just listen to the buzzwords: "Astrobiology", "Origin of life", "Salt lakes", "The first Eukaryote", "Hot springs", "Underwater volcano", "Eukaryotic prototype", "The Third Domain". Everyone gets caught up in the enthusiasm sooner or later.

In the archaea we see ourselves The fundamental cellular machinery of archaea is remarkably similar to the eukaryotes with a large part of the components sharing direct homology. Interestingly the archaeal components are generally less complex than the eukaryotic counterparts. Because of this archaea is used as a model to understand eukaryotes. Another perk is that the thermostable proteins of some of the best studied archaea tend to be comparably easy to chrystalize, which means that the structure of some proteins in core information processes have only been determined from archaea.

In the archaea we see the past Every since the archaea was discovered to be a domain of their own, it has been speculated that they provide clues to how the first cells evolved. Do the extremophilic life style of archaea reflect an origin of life in hot springs? Do the methanogeneic pathways of archaea reflect a mode of metabolism on early earth? The archaea are also interesting for clues about how the first eukaryotes evolved.

In the archaea we see the future Archaea inhabit the most inhospitable environments on Earth, with a temperature record above the boiling point, tolerance of pH less than 0 and one of the highest salt tolerances in the world. Therefor they are used as models for life on other planets. What can we expect once we start exploring possibly inhabited worlds outside of our own. What are the environmental constraints of life, and what makes archaea different from other organisms in that they can live in the extreme environments.

In the archaea we see the present With the global warming becoming more and more apparent, the archaeal production of methane and fixation of carbon dioxide need to be understood. The archaea are essential for the large biogeochemical cycles of nutrients, and in many ways their roles are still not understood.

The archaea are cool just by themselves With so much diversity undiscovered, with so many unique traits, with so many modes of living simply never seen before, there are so many new discoveries waiting among the archaea.

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