Foundation president, Harvey Fineberg, and chairman emeritus and co-founder, Gordon Moore, discuss the Statement of Founders’ Intent with staff.
Tiny microorganisms in the deep sea play a crucial role in combatting challenges in climate change: they eat methane. A research team led by Moore Foundation investigator Victoria Orphan recently unlocked the mystery of how these microbes work together to consume large amounts of methane released from the ocean floor. The team discovered the microbes could communicate with one another even when they were not in direct contact. How? By using electrons to share energy over long distances. Dr. Orphan says this is “one of the first examples of direct electron transfer occurring between uncultured microorganisms in the environment. Our hunch is that this is going to be more common than is currently recognized.”
Read the full press release here and the published results in the journal Nature.
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California Institute of Technology, Division of Geology and Planetary Sciences
$1,796,300
66 months
Victoria Orphan Investigator Award
May 2013
