Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 20h

Yay methanotrophs! My favorite type of microbe... 🥰

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/c...

The Very Hungry Microbes That Could, Just Maybe, Cool the Planet

www.nytimes.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 3d

A huge field of hydrothermal vents - driven by serpentinization and formed by a massive hydrogen explosion - recently discovered in the western Pacific!

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

A large intraplate hydrogen-rich hydrothermal system driven by serpentinization in the western Pacific: Kunlun

A hydrogen-rich hydrothermal system in the western Pacific reveals potential for hydrogen resources and early life.

www.science.org

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 18d

(And if you want to re-live the tense negotiations when the final text came together, here's my report from a couple years ago!)

www.newyorker.com/news/daily-c...

The Inside Story of the U.N. High Seas Treaty

A new global agreement protects marine life in parts of the ocean that laws have been unable to reach.

www.newyorker.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 18d

The BBNJ "High Seas" Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries and is now officially in effect! What a journey it's been... 🎉

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/c...

Hard-Fought Treaty to Protect Ocean Life Clears a Final Hurdle

www.nytimes.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 19d

Are you an early career scientist curious about getting involved in deep-sea research? Apply for our "new user program" at @agu.org this year 👇

www.unols.org/news/early-c...

DeSSC New Users Program

[Application Deadline: 3 October 2025]

www.unols.org

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 21d

Loving this set of vignettes about microbes' role in climate dynamics 👏

www.quantamagazine.org/microbes-als...

Microbes Also Change the Climate. Could That Help Us? | Quanta Magazine

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address cli...

www.quantamagazine.org

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · 25d

Space weathering effects in Bennu asteroid sample! This paper reads like a bit like a geomorphology textbook on the microscale - really cool to see how minuscule observations can point us to process.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Space weathering effects in Bennu asteroid samples - Nature Geoscience

Material from the Hokioi crater on asteroid Bennu experienced space weathering and suggests microcratering plays a more active role on carbonaceous bodies than initially thought, according to a study ...

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 29

A microbial community's composition can help reveal the mineralogy of its surroundings 😮

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

DNA sequencing, microbial indicators, and the discovery of buried kimberlites - Communications Earth & Environment

Soil microbial community compositions respond to the presence of kimberlite ore minerals under laboratory conditions and in real-world field settings, suggesting that microbial DNA sequencing could be...

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 23

Never has an article headline spoken more directly to me 😂

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/23/m...

‘Your materials have been incinerated.’ The confounding process of traveling with scientific samples. - The Boston Globe

Many researchers described the process of transporting samples as bureaucratic and complicated. Some noted that universities do not adequately advise scientists on how to comply with changing governme...

www.bostonglobe.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 9

Score another one for the microbes! Somehow not surprising, but astonishing at the same time - the tree microbiome 👏

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A diverse and distinct microbiome inside living trees - Nature

Microbiome analyses of living trees show that a single tree can host approximately one trillion bacteria, with microbial communities distinctly partitioned between heartwood and sapwood and with minim...

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 5

Wow, big development! 😂🙏

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 5

Latest season of VolcaKnowledge has dropped! Stop by to learn about the many (and surprising) ways that volcanoes affect us, no matter where you live. 🌋

www.youtube.com/channel/UCD9...

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Aug 1

Oh check it out, @microbesheik.bsky.social found some cool microbes in "mysterious goo" from a ship's rudder shaft...and I got to talk about it 😂

www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/s...

Scientists happened upon black goo on a ship — and discovered it was teeming with life | CNN

A Great Lakes research vessel had goo leaking from its rudder shaft. Scientists later found it contained previously undiscovered microorganisms.

www.cnn.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 31

Check out "the deepest and the most extensive chemosynthesis-based communities known to exist on Earth" - methane seeps along Russia's NE coast, down to a depth of 9500 meters! 😮

It's amazing that such incredible ecosystems remain to be found in the deep sea...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches - Nature

The discovery of chemosynthesis-based benthic communities at depths of 5,800 m to 9,533 m in the Kuril–Kamchatka and western Aleutian trenches challenges traditional perspectives on the energy sources...

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 28

Eeeek, this would be bad!

Carlos Moffat @carlosmoffat.com · Jul 25

🌊❄️🧪 🇦🇶 Please share:

We have learned that the National Science Foundation is moving ahead with plans to decommission the U.S. Research Vessel/Ice Breaker Nathaniel B. Palmer this October.

If you care about Antarctic research, please read on (1/n)

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 24

Check out this beautiful doc from @fieseler.bsky.social on nodules & "dark oxygen" - honored to be part of it!

Our (and others') research on dark oxygen remains bewildering, exciting...and critically important as we try to understand how the deep sea really works.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcm...

Nodules: Deep-Sea Life Giver or Key to Our Energy Future?

YouTube video by Scientific American

www.youtube.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 24

I mean, we mostly do it to avoid contaminating the samples rather than to protect ourselves, but added benefit I suppose! 😂

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 24

For marine invertebrates, the deep sea - unlike shallower coastal waters - is all connected...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spatiotemporal faunal connectivity across global sea floors - Nature

We analyse a global dataset of genomic DNA sequences for Ophiuroidea to gain an understanding of phylogenetic divergence and biotic movement across oceans, finding phylogentically divergent faunas at ...

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jul 23

The year’s crowning achievement! 🙌😂

Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · Jul 16

Volta experiment at the GRC AEM with @jjmarlow.bsky.social and @dkountz.bsky.social (video by Zackary Jay)

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jun 20

Oooh so cool! Sea spiders that farm methane-eating microbes on their exoskeletons 😮

Methane seeps never cease to amaze...

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Methane-powered sea spiders: Diverse, epibiotic methanotrophs serve as a source of nutrition for deep-sea methane seep Sericosura | PNAS

Methane seeps harbor uncharacterized animal–microbe symbioses with unique nutritional strategies. Three undescribed sea spider species (family Ammo...

www.pnas.org

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jun 9

"Why we should protect the high seas from all extraction, forever"

This is an uphill battle (to say the least), but a compelling case! Mostly the argument is, we just don't need stuff from the high seas, so why go to the trouble? 🤷

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why we should protect the high seas from all extraction, forever

Exploitation of the high seas risks doing irreversible damage to biodiversity, climate stability and ocean equity. A consensus must be built now to save them.

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Jun 8

Could this be a way to keep synthetic microbes released into the environment in check? Forcing a dependence on a non-standard amino acid produced by a partner microbe...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid - Nature Microbiology

A genetically engineered microbial symbiosis based on synthetic auxotrophy is created, with potential implications as a biocontainment strategy.

www.nature.com

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Apr 16

Made a science pilgrimage to St. Anthony Falls Lab the other day! It’s right next to a dammed part of the Mississippi River, and uses the water flow to run large-scale hydrology and geomorphology experiments. Part of the river can essentially be diverted to run *through* the building!

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Jeffrey Marlow @jjmarlow.bsky.social · Apr 13

Lovely visit to @uconn.bsky.social last week! Learned a lot about low-cost nitrate and ozone sensors 😮👏

Reposted by Jeffrey Marlow

Dr. Kenna Harmony Rubin @kennarubin.bsky.social · Jan 31

Recently upgraded Alvin can now dive to 6500m. Read our new article about its capabilities, latest #deepsea science discoveries, & new milestones on its #science verification expedition 🌊🛠🧪.

Thx to the entire whoi.edu Alvin team & funding from
#NSF-funded #USONR @noaa.gov @urigso.bsky.social

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