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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). [1]
Dr. Inagaki studied microbiology and molecular genetics at Kyushu University, Japan, where he obtained his BS, MS, and PhD. He completed his doctorate in 2000 in the lab of Dr. Seiya Ogata, and then joined JAMSTEC as a research scientist in the Deep-Sea Frontier Research Program. From 2005-2006, he was a guest scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany where he worked with Dr. Bo Barker Jørgensen. Inagaki continued his work at JAMSTEC, and is now the group leader of the Geomicrobiology Group at the Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research and the Geobiotechnology Group at the Research and Development Center for Submarine Resources. Inagaki is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemical Society, the International Society of Extremophiles, the International Society for Microbial Ecology, the Japanese Association for Petroleum Technology, the Japan Geoscience Union, the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry, the Japanese Society for Extremophiles, and the Japanese Society for Microbial Ecology. Since 2005, he has served on the editorial board of Applied and Environmental Microbiology , and in 2017 he became a senior editor for The ISME Journal. [1] Inagaki was an editor of the book Earth and Life Processes Discovered from Subseafloor Environments: A Decade of Science Achieved by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). [2] He is a member of the Deep Life Community Scientific Steering Committee for the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO). [3] In 2015, Inagaki won the Asahiko Taira International Scientific Ocean Drilling Research Prize, awarded by the American Geophysical Union, in recognition of his interdisciplinary work to understand the limits of microbial life on Earth through ocean drilling. [4]
Dr. Inagaki's research has advanced knowledge of microbes that live beneath the ocean floor. He was the first to report the vertical and geographical distribution of microbes in deeply buried marine sediments of the Pacific Ocean Margins. [5] He used stable isotope tracing experiments to show that cells in deep subseafloor sediments are metabolically active. [6] Inagaki has developed new techniques and instrumentation for ocean drilling. He was a co-chief on the International Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 337 on board the vessel Chikyū. They set a world record for scientific drilling, reaching 2,466 meters below the seafloor off Shimokita Peninsula of Japan in the northwest Pacific Ocean. The expedition showed the existence of microbial life in coal sediments down to almost 2.5 kilometers beneath the seafloor. [7] In 2016, Inagaki was a co-chief on IODP Expedition 370 to the Nankai Trough, located about 120 kilometers off the coast of Japan. The research group drilled 1.2 kilometers down, to where sediment and rock reach temperatures of 130 °C, to determine the temperature limits of subsurface life. [8]
In 2006 Inagaki and colleagues reported the finding of a submarine lake of liquid carbon dioxide. [9]
An extremophile is an organism with optimal growth in environmental conditions considered extreme and that it is challenging for a carbon-based life form, including all known life, to survive.
Geomicrobiology is the scientific field at the intersection of geology and microbiology. 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.
The Lost City Hydrothermal Field, often referred to simply as Lost City, is an area of marine alkaline hydrothermal vents located on the Atlantis Massif at the intersection between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis Transform Fault, in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a long-lived site of active and inactive ultramafic-hosted serpentinization, abiotically producing many simple molecules such as methane and hydrogen which are fundamental to microbial life. As such it has generated scientific interest as a prime location for investigating the origin of life on Earth and other planets similar to it.
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) was an international marine research program. The program used heavy drilling equipment mounted aboard ships to monitor and sample sub-seafloor environments. With this research, the IODP documented environmental change, Earth processes and effects, the biosphere, solid earth cycles, and geodynamics.
Chikyū (ちきゅう) is a Japanese scientific drilling ship built for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The vessel is designed to ultimately drill 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) beneath the seabed, where the Earth's crust is much thinner, and into the Earth's mantle, deeper than any other hole drilled in the ocean thus far.
The riserless research vessel JOIDES Resolution, often referred to as the JR, is one of the scientific drilling ships used by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), an international, multi-drilling platform research program. The JR was previously the main research ship used during the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and was used along with the Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu and other mission-specific drilling platforms throughout the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. She is the successor of Glomar Challenger.
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. 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.
The European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) is a consortium of 14 European countries and Canada that was formed in 2003 to join the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) as a single member. ECORD is now part of the International Ocean Discovery Program, which addresses crucial questions in Earth, Ocean, Environmental and Life sciences based on drill cores, borehole imaging, observatory data, and related geophysical imaging obtained from beneath the ocean floor using specialized ocean-going drilling and research vessels and platforms. As a contributing member of IODP, ECORD is entitled to berths on every IODP expedition.
The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, or JAMSTEC (海洋機構), is a Japanese national research institute for marine-earth science and technology. It was founded as Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (海洋科学技術センター) in October 1971, and became an Independent Administrative Institution administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in April 2004.
The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global research program designed to transform understanding of carbon's role in Earth. DCO is a community of scientists, including biologists, physicists, geoscientists and chemists, whose work crosses several traditional disciplinary lines to develop the new, integrative field of deep carbon science. To complement this research, the DCO's infrastructure includes public engagement and education, online and offline community support, innovative data management, and novel instrumentation development.
The Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project (JFAST) was a rapid-response scientific expedition that drilled oceanfloor boreholes through the fault-zone of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. JFAST gathered important data about the rupture mechanism and physical properties of the fault that caused the huge earthquake and tsunami which devastated much of northeast Japan.
Katrina Jane Edwards was a pioneering geomicrobiologist known for her studies of organisms living below the ocean floor, specifically exploring the interactions between the microbes and their geological surroundings, and how global processes were influenced by these interactions. She spearheaded the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigation (C-DEBI) project at the University of Southern California, which is ongoing. Edwards also helped organize the deep biosphere research community by heading the Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory Project on Loihi Seamount, and serving on several program steering committees involving ocean drilling. Edwards taught at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and later became a professor at the University of Southern California.[1][2]
The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is an international marine research collaboration dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring the subseafloor. The research enabled by IODP samples and data improves scientific understanding of changing climate and ocean conditions, the origins of ancient life, risks posed by geohazards, and the structure and processes of Earth's tectonic plates and uppermost mantle. IODP began in 2013 and builds on the research of four previous scientific ocean drilling programs: Project Mohole, Deep Sea Drilling Project, Ocean Drilling Program, and Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Together, these programs represent the longest running and most successful international Earth science collaboration.
Marinobacter alkaliphilus is an alkaliphilic and mesophilic bacterium from the genus of Marinobacter from the Ocean which has been investigated from the Ocean Drilling Program.
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs is a German biogeochemist and organic geochemist known for his research of microbial life below the ocean bed - the deep biosphere.
Beth N. Orcutt is an American oceanographer whose research focuses on the microbial life of the ocean floor. As of 2012, she is a Senior Research Scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. She is also a Senior Scientist of the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations, a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at the University of Southern California and part of the Deep Carbon Observatory Deep Life Community. Orcutt has made fundamental contributions to the study of life below the seafloor, particularly in oceanic crust and has worked with the International Scientific Ocean Drilling Program.
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.
Steven D’Hondt is an American geomicrobiologist who studies microbial communities living beneath the seafloor. He is a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.
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.
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. It includes all three domains of life and the genetic diversity rivals that on the surface.