Jennifer Glass, Associate Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of
Technology

As humanity careens into the uncharted waters of the Anthropocene, we seek novel strategies to
modulate the chemistry of our atmosphere. Microorganisms are well-known to produce and
consume greenhouse gases and have had outsized influence on the chemistry of Earth’s
atmosphere and ocean over the eons. Yet the vast majority of microbial species remain
uncultivated, and most microbial proteins, particularly those from marine and subsurface
environments, remain uncharacterized. In this talk, I will highlight our lab’s recent studies that
integrate environmental omics and laboratory studies of uncultivated marine microbes, including (i)
a novel bacterial clade in marine anoxic zones that appear to make their own oxygen from nitric
oxide, and (ii) a new type of bacterial proteins from deep subsurface sediments that slow the
growth of methane hydrate. These studies inform our understanding of how microbes survive in
cold dark anoxic ecosystems and how microbial proteins could play a role in a green economy