{"id":15847,"date":"2018-08-21T09:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T09:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=15847"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:52:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:52:25","slug":"investigating-earths-earliest-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/investigating-earths-earliest-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigating Earth\u2019s earliest life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In the second grade, Kelsey Moore became acquainted with geologic time. Her teachers instructed the class to unroll a giant strip of felt down a long hallway in the school. Most of the felt was solid black, but at the very end, the students caught a glimpse of red.<\/span><\/p>\n

That tiny red strip represented the time on Earth in which humans have lived, the teachers said. The lesson sparked Moore\u2019s curiosity. What happened on Earth before there were humans? How could she find out?<\/span><\/p>\n

A little over a decade later, Moore enrolled in her first geoscience class at Smith College and discovered she now had the tools to begin to answer those very questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore zeroed in on geobiology, the study of how the physical Earth and biosphere interact. During the first semester of her sophomore year of college, she took a class that she says \u201ctotally blew my mind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to learn about Earth history. But then I took this invertebrate paleontology class and realized how much we can learn about life and how life has evolved,\u201d Moore says. A few lectures into the semester, she mustered the courage to ask her professor, Sara Pruss in Smith\u2019s Department of Geosciences, for a research position in the lab.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now a fourth-year graduate student at MIT, Moore works in the geobiology lab of Associate Professor Tanja Bosak in MIT\u2019s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. In addition to carrying out her own research, Moore, who is also a Graduate Resident Tutor in the Simmons Hall undergraduate dorm, makes it a priority to help guide the lab\u2019s undergraduate researchers and teach them the techniques they need to know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Time travel<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a natural curiosity about how we got here, and how the Earth became what it is. There\u2019s so much unknown about the early biosphere on Earth when you go back 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion years,\u201d Moore says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore studies early life on Earth by focusing on ancient microbes from the Proterozoic, the period of Earth\u2019s history that spans 2.5 billion to 542 million years ago \u2014 between the time when oxygen began to appear in the atmosphere up until the advent and proliferation of complex life. Early in her graduate studies, Moore and Bosak collaborated with Greg Fournier, the Cecil and Ida Green Assistant Professor of Geobiology, on research tracking cyanobacterial evolution. Their research is supported by the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question of when cyanobacteria gained the ability to perform oxygenic photosynthesis, which produces oxygen and is how many plants on Earth today get their energy, is still under debate. To track cyanobacterial evolution, MIT researchers draw from genetics and micropaleontology. Moore works on molecular clock models, which track genetic mutations over time to measure evolutionary divergence in organisms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clad with a white lab coat, lab glasses, and bright purple gloves, Moore sifts through multiple cyanobacteria under a microscope to find modern analogs to ancient cyanobacterial fossils. The process can be time-consuming.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI do\u00a0a lot<\/em>\u00a0of microscopy,\u201d Moore says with a laugh. Once she\u2019s identified an analog, Moore cultures that particular type of cyanobacteria, a process which can sometimes take months. After the strain is enriched and cultured, Moore extracts DNA from the cyanobacteria. \u201cWe sequence modern organisms to get their genomes, reconstruct them, and build phylogenetic trees,\u201d Moore says.<\/span><\/p>\n

By tying information together from ancient fossils and modern analogs using molecular clocks, Moore hopes to build a chronogram \u2014 a type of phylogenetic tree with a time component that eventually traces back to when cyanobacteria evolved the ability to split water and produce oxygen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore also studies the process of fossilization, on Earth and potentially other planets. She is collaborating with researchers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to help them prepare for the upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to analyze fossils on Earth to get an idea for how we\u2019re going to look at whatever samples get brought back from Mars, and then to also understand how we can learn from other planets and potentially other life,\u201d Moore says.<\/span><\/p>\n

After MIT, Moore hopes to continue research, pursue postdoctoral fellowships, and eventually teach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really love research. So why stop? I\u2019m going to keep going,\u201d Moore says. She says she wants to teach in an institution that emphasizes giving research opportunities to undergraduate students.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUndergrads can be overlooked, but they\u2019re really intelligent people and they\u2019re budding scientists,\u201d Moore says. \u201cSo being able to foster that and to see them grow and trust that they are capable in doing research, I think, is my calling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Geology up close<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To study ancient organisms and find fossils, Moore has traveled across the world, to Shark Bay in Australia, Death Valley in the United States, and Bermuda.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to understand the rocks, you really have to get your nose on the rocks. Go and look at them, and be there. You have to go and stand in the tidal pools and see what\u2019s happening \u2014 watch the air bubbles from the cyanobacteria and see them make oxygen,\u201d Moore says. \u201cThose kinds of things are really important in order to understand and fully wrap your brain around how important those interactions are.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And in the field, Moore says, researchers have to \u201croll with the punches.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have a nice, beautiful, pristine lab set up with all the tools and equipment that you need. You just can\u2019t account for everything,\u201d Moore says. \u201cYou have to do what you can with the tools that you have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mentorship<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As a Graduate Resident Tutor, Moore helps to create supporting living environments for the undergraduate residents of Simmons Hall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each week, she hosts a study break in her apartment in Simmons for her cohort of students \u2014 complete with freshly baked treats. \u201c[Baking] is really relaxing for me,\u201d Moore says. \u201cIt\u2019s therapeutic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think part of the reason I love baking so much is that it\u2019s my creative outlet,\u201d she says. \u201cI know that a lot of people describe baking as like chemistry. But I think you have the opportunity to be more creative and have more fun with it. The creative side of it is something that I love, that I crave outside of research.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of Moore\u2019s determination to research, trek out in the field, and mentor undergraduates draws from her \u201cbiggest science inspiration\u201d \u2014 her mother, Michele Moore, a physics professor at Spokane Falls Community College in Spokane, Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a stay-at-home mom my entire childhood. And then when I was in middle school, she decided to go and get a college degree,\u201d Moore says. When Moore started high school, her mother earned her bachelor\u2019s degree in physics. Then, when Moore started college, her mother earned her PhD. \u201cShe was sort of one step ahead of me all the time, and she was a big inspiration for me and gave me the confidence to be a woman in science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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