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Teaching Resources

Their and Our Past

Glaciers, found in high mountains and polar regions, cover 11% of the land and store 70% of the world’s freshwater. Formed from snow that doesn't melt each year, they serve as archives of ancient climates and microbes, offering insights into Earth's past and potential biotechnological innovations. These microbes could also help us understand life on other frozen worlds. However, rapid glacier melting is releasing preserved water, microbes, and viruses, potentially including ancient pathogens. This causes flooding, sea-level rise, and disrupts water supplies for billions. It also exposes soil that can harm ecosystems and accelerate climate change. Studying glaciers is crucial to understanding our past, and taking urgent action to combat climate change is essential to slow their melting and preserve these natural archives.

Ice core drilling and ice core; Photo credit: Lonnie G. Thompson/The Ohio State University

Glacier Ice: A Museum of Ancient Microbes

Grandfather: we heard today that there are microbes in glaciers. They must be even older than you!

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All organisms exchange gases with the atmosphere. We breathe in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide and water, converting food into energy. Plants, which supply this food, absorb carbon dioxide and water through their leaves and use sunlight to produce oxygen and sugars. These processes, photosynthesis in plants and respiration in animals, balance atmospheric gases over time. Earth's habitability relies on biogeochemical cycles, driven by proteins that evolved in ancient microbes. These microbes, the foundation of life, created the conditions that made Earth habitable long before plants and animals existed.

Protein nanomachines: how they helped create our planet

Do the plants in the park breathe air like me?

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The history of life is recorded in stone, not by ancient civilizations, but by microorganisms. Over 3.5 billion years ago, these tiny organisms left their mark through stromatolites and microfossils. But how can something microscopic create visible structures? How do we know these fossils are from ancient microorganisms? Luckily, their modern descendants still exist, and living stromatolites can be found if you know where to look.

Stromatolites

Daddy are those coral reefs?

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All living organisms need energy and nutrients to build and maintain cellular components. This is true for both familiar organisms like plants and animals (Eukarya) and single-celled organisms in the domains Bacteria and Archaea. Humans get energy and nutrients from food, all of which ultimately comes from plants, whether directly or indirectly through animals. Photosynthetic organisms like plants, algae, and Cyanobacteria use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into organic matter via photosynthesis. They obtain most nutrients from their environment, often made available by Bacteria and Archaea. Nitrogen, crucial for all life, mostly exists as dinitrogen (N2) gas, which is not bioavailable to most organisms. The enzyme nitrogenase converts N2 into usable forms, sustaining life on Earth.

Image credit: Peggy Greb, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) -Agriculture Research Service.

Evolution of nitrogenase: Providing Nutrients to Feed a Hungry World

Dad, how are we able to produce enough food to feed so many people?

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We will explore cellular life on Earth, connected by a universal common ancestor. We will discuss the types of cellular life, their evolution over time, including the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) and the origin of eukaryotic cells from prokaryotes. This journey reveals the deep origins of life and our microbial ancestors, covering microbiology, cellular life forms, and evolution to eukaryotic complexity, including our place in this process. In addition, we will explore questions of sustainability and the future of life in a changing world, predicting evolution and understanding diversification and extinction in the era of climate change.

The tree of life and LUCA

Is all life on Earth related, and who is LUCA?

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