This may come as a surprise, but every drop of seawater is teeming with life that is invisible to the naked eye. While small in size, these ocean-dwelling microbes are central to many critical environmental processes, contributing to the oxygen in our atmosphere, controlling global carbon dioxide levels, and serving as the gate keepers for vast stores of methane in the deep sea. Collectively, they have shaped this habitable world we enjoy today, but we are just beginning to understand how marine microbial communities work and how they may respond to environmental change in the future.
Dr. Victoria Orphan is a Professor of Geobiology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech. Since joining the faculty in 2004, her research has contributed new understanding of microbial interactions in extreme environments and their impact on the cycling of carbon and nutrients in the oceans. Much of her work focuses on microorganisms living in deep-sea sediments that sequester large quantities of methane venting from the ocean floor. Orphan studies microbial life in these remote environments using research ships and manned and robotic submersibles. In the lab, she employs novel methods that combine molecular biology, microscopy, and geochemistry to directly study the activity and intimate relationships between different microbes in their natural habitat. By tackling fundamental questions in microbial ecology, Orphan and her team are uncovering the microbial activities and processes that are central to the cycling of carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen in the deep sea.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx