COMMUNITY SCIENCE :: NOVEL LAVA CAVE BACTERIA
Meet one of the newest lava cave microbes introduced to Western science, BL16E . Its colonies are beige, opaque, and a millimeter or two in diameter. The microbe itself and its colonies have a smooth, glistening surface, a sticky, mucus- like texture, and can grow at temperatures between 11 and 37 C. Isolated from Hawai‘i Island’s Kaūmana Cave — which was formed by an 1881 Mauna Loa volcano lava flow — the bacterium could provide insight on how life might exist on Mars. I
N 2017 , BL16E’s DNA was sequenced by Hawai‘i Baptist Aca- demy students as a joint project between the ‘Āina-Informatics Net-work (AIN), the Donachie Lab at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the NASA Exobio- logy Program, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Because BL16E was a novel bacterium, the student microbiologists were given the opportunity to name it. In a nod to their school emblem, they proposed Paraflavitalea speifideiaquila, an “eagle of faith and hope.” According to one of the project designers, Dr. Rebecca Prescott, a professor at the University of Mississippi and former postdoctoral fellow with NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Hawai‘i lava caves are geologically similar to ones on Mars and the moon. This means lava caves on Mars and the moon are places where life could potentially find purchase due to more stable temperatures, the presence of water, and protection from cosmic radiation. As lava caves are also an important part of the cultural landscape of Hawai‘i Island, the caves accessed for the student project were all geologically recent formations containing no iwi kupuna or historical artifacts. Utilizing the MinION sequencer and other tools in the AIN mobile lab, students at 10 Hawai‘i schools were able to sequence numerous bacteria isolated from the lava caves. At the project’s beginning, students used the EDGE bioinformatics platform, developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to conduct analyses. This workflow was eventually replaced by a high school friendly data analysis pipeline created by ‘Iolani School Community Science bioinformatics specialist Ethan Hill ’14, called Ulana, which allows students to assemble the genomes, assess assembly completeness, and identify genes that could potentially contribute to the microbe’s ability to thrive in extreme environments.
One of the novel species the students discovered possessed a large variety of capabilities, prompting scientists to evaluate how it might grow on meteorites. “We were interested in seeing if bacteria and fungi work together to break down meteorites — which are largely basalt rock, just like lava caves — and we found that they do indeed like to ‘eat’ meteorites just like they would basalt rock from Earth,” explains Prescott. “Without AIN’s assistance, we would not have had a complete genome of that microbe, which told us it was worth evaluating.” Many lava cave microbes are closely related to those found in Earth’s primordial past and are carriers of knowledge that can inform the present and the future. Prescott draws a parallel to the significance of lava caves in Hawaiian culture as a ‘belly of life” representing ancient lineages of Hawaiian families. “Pele learned from her uncle, Lonomakua, about all of life’s amazing diversity inside a lava cave. To me, that says caves are special places of diversity that life can retreat to, even when the world above changes radically,” says Prescott, with utmost admiration for the tiny, resilient microbes. “They survive the eons, quietly existing and carrying life onward.”
OPENER PHOTO Kenneth Ingram
36 I IOLANI.ORG
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator