Frederick (Rick) Colwell is a microbial ecologist specializing in subsurface microbiology and geomicrobiology. He is a professor of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University, and an adjunct and affiliate faculty member at Idaho State University. [1]
Colwell earned his BA in Biology from Whitman College in 1977, his MS in microbiology at Northern Arizona University in 1982, and his PhD in microbiology at Virginia Tech in 1986. He completed his postdoctoral research at Idaho National Laboratory in 1988, when he became a scientist there. [2] Colwell joined the faculty of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University in June 2006. He has served as president of the International Society for Subsurface Microbiology since 2008. He is a reviewer for Applied and Environmental Microbiology and a member of the editorial board of the journal Biodegradation . Colwell is a member of the Deep Carbon Observatory’s Deep Life Scientific Steering Committee. [3]
In his research, Colwell uses molecular methods to investigate the rates of microbial activities. He has projects focused on methane hydrates [4] and methane seeps in marine sediments [5] and microbes that precipitate the mineral calcite [6] in aquifers and other subsurface environments. Colwell and marine geologist Martin Fisk, are studying microbial communities within deep volcanic rocks at the Wallula pilot well in eastern Washington state. [7] Carbon dioxide will be injected into the well to test carbon sequestration. Colwell will examine how the microbial communities respond to the carbon dioxide injections and whether will be useful for monitoring and measuring the presence of carbon dioxide. [8] Colwell was part of the North pond exploration in the Atlantic Ocean with Katrina Edwards to examine the microbes living in the rocks and sediments beneath the seafloor. [8]
Geomicrobiology is the scientific field at the intersection of geology and microbiology and is a major subfield of geobiology. It concerns the role of microbes on geological and geochemical processes and effects of minerals and metals to microbial growth, activity and survival. Such interactions occur in the geosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. Geomicrobiology studies microorganisms that are driving the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, mediating mineral precipitation and dissolution, and sorbing and concentrating metals. The applications include for example bioremediation, mining, climate change mitigation and public drinking water supplies.
A biogeochemical cycle is the pathway by which a chemical substance cycles the biotic and the abiotic compartments of Earth. The biotic compartment is the biosphere and the abiotic compartments are the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. There are biogeochemical cycles for chemical elements, such as for calcium, carbon, hydrogen, mercury, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, selenium, iron and sulfur, as well as molecular cycles, such as for water and silica. There are also macroscopic cycles, such as the rock cycle, and human-induced cycles for synthetic compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In some cycles there are reservoirs where a substance can remain or be sequestered for a long period of time.
Anaerobic respiration is respiration using electron acceptors other than molecular oxygen (O2). Although oxygen is not the final electron acceptor, the process still uses a respiratory electron transport chain.
Methanogenesis or biomethanation is the formation of methane coupled to energy conservation by microbes known as methanogens. Organisms capable of producing methane for energy conservation have been identified only from the domain Archaea, a group phylogenetically distinct from both eukaryotes and bacteria, although many live in close association with anaerobic bacteria. Other forms of methane production that are not coupled to ATP synthesis exist within all three domains of life. The production of methane is an important and widespread form of microbial metabolism. In anoxic environments, it is the final step in the decomposition of biomass. Methanogenesis is responsible for significant amounts of natural gas accumulations, the remainder being thermogenic.
Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life—Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria—as well as viruses.
Gammaproteobacteria is a class of bacteria in the phylum Pseudomonadota. It contains about 250 genera, which makes it the most genera-rich taxon of the Prokaryotes. Several medically, ecologically, and scientifically important groups of bacteria belong to this class. It is composed by all Gram-negative microbes and is the most phylogenetically and physiologically diverse class of Proteobacteria.
In the deep ocean, marine snow is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the light-rich photic zone to the aphotic zone below, which is referred to as the biological pump. Export production is the amount of organic matter produced in the ocean by primary production that is not recycled (remineralised) before it sinks into the aphotic zone. Because of the role of export production in the ocean's biological pump, it is typically measured in units of carbon. The term was first coined by the explorer William Beebe as he observed it from his bathysphere. As the origin of marine snow lies in activities within the productive photic zone, the prevalence of marine snow changes with seasonal fluctuations in photosynthetic activity and ocean currents. Marine snow can be an important food source for organisms living in the aphotic zone, particularly for organisms which live very deep in the water column.
The Southern Pacific Gyre is part of the Earth's system of rotating ocean currents, bounded by the Equator to the north, Australia to the west, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the south, and South America to the east. The center of the South Pacific Gyre is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, the site on Earth farthest from any continents and productive ocean regions and is regarded as Earth's largest oceanic desert. With an area of 37 million square kilometres it makes up ~10 % of the Earth's ocean surface. The gyre, as with Earth's other four gyres, contains an area with elevated concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris known as the South Pacific garbage patch.
Antje Boetius is a German marine biologist. She is a professor of geomicrobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, University of Bremen. Boetius received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in March 2009 for her study of sea bed microorganisms that affect the global climate. She is also the director of Germany's polar research hub, the Alfred Wegener Institute.
The class Zetaproteobacteria is the sixth and most recently described class of the Pseudomonadota. Zetaproteobacteria can also refer to the group of organisms assigned to this class. The Zetaproteobacteria were originally represented by a single described species, Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, which is an iron-oxidizing neutrophilic chemolithoautotroph originally isolated from Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount in 1996 (post-eruption). Molecular cloning techniques focusing on the small subunit ribosomal RNA gene have also been used to identify a more diverse majority of the Zetaproteobacteria that have as yet been unculturable.
Hydrate Ridge is an accretionary thrust clathrate hydrate formation, meaning it has been made of sediment scraped off of subducting oceanic plate. It is approx. 200 m high, and located 100 km offshore of Oregon. At hydrate formations, methane is trapped in crystallized water structures. Such methane transforms into the gaseous phase and seeps into the ocean at this site, which has been a popular location of study since its discovery in 1986. Hydrate Ridge also supports a methane-driven benthic community.
Geopsychrobacter electrodiphilus is a species of bacteria, the type species of its genus. It is a psychrotolerant member of its family, capable of attaching to the anodes of sediment fuel cells and harvesting electricity by oxidation of organic compounds to carbon dioxide and transferring the electrons to the anode.
Methanoculleus submarinus is a methanogen. It is non-motile and highly irregular coccoid-shaped. Nankai-1 is its type strain.
Hadesarchaea, formerly called the South-African Gold Mine Miscellaneous Euryarchaeal Group, are a class of thermophile microorganisms that have been found in deep mines, hot springs, marine sediments and other subterranean environments.
Jill Ann Mikucki is an American microbiologist, educator and Antarctic researcher, best known for her work at Blood Falls demonstrating that microbes can grow below ice in the absence of sunlight. She is a leader of international teams studying study ecosystems under the ice.
Dr. Fumio Inagaki is a geomicrobiologist whose research focuses on the deep subseafloor biosphere. He is the deputy director of the Research and Development Center for Ocean Drilling Science and the Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research, both at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
Mark Alexander Lever is a microbial ecologist who studies the role of microorganisms in the global carbon cycle. He is a professor of environmental microbiology in the Department of Environmental Systems Science in the Institute of Biogeochemical and Pollutant Dynamics at ETH Zurich.
The sulfate-methane transition zone (SMTZ) is a zone in oceans, lakes, and rivers found below the sediment surface in which sulfate and methane coexist. The formation of a SMTZ is driven by the diffusion of sulfate down the sediment column and the diffusion of methane up the sediments. At the SMTZ, their diffusion profiles meet and sulfate and methane react with one another, which allows the SMTZ to harbor a unique microbial community whose main form of metabolism is anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). The presence of AOM marks the transition from dissimilatory sulfate reduction to methanogenesis as the main metabolism utilized by organisms.
The hydrothermal vent microbial community includes all unicellular organisms that live and reproduce in a chemically distinct area around hydrothermal vents. These include organisms in the microbial mat, free floating cells, or bacteria in an endosymbiotic relationship with animals. Chemolithoautotrophic bacteria derive nutrients and energy from the geological activity at Hydrothermal vents to fix carbon into organic forms. Viruses are also a part of the hydrothermal vent microbial community and their influence on the microbial ecology in these ecosystems is a burgeoning field of research.
The deep biosphere is the part of the biosphere that resides below the first few meters of the surface. It extends down at least 5 kilometers below the continental surface and 10.5 kilometers below the sea surface, at temperatures that may reach beyond 120 °C, which is comparable to the maximum temperature where a metabolically active organism has been found. It includes all three domains of life and the genetic diversity rivals that on the surface.