News

Posted: Jul 29, 2022 - 12:00am

Dr. Diana Northup and UNM graduate and current employee of the Northup Lab, Joseph Medley, contributed to work describing microbial communities in Hawaiian lava tubes. The news article below is based on their paper recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology, "Islands Within Islands: Bacterial Phylogenetic Structure and Consortia in Hawaiian Lava Caves and Fumaroles".

"Scientists are examining bacterial communities in centuries-old lava caves and tubes on Hawaiʻi island, and say they “may help us understand how life might have existed on Mars and early Earth.” A news release from the University of Hawaiʻi explains how a team of researchers – including experts from the UH Mānoa School of Life Sciences – investigated several sites on the Big Island, and found the bacteria to be “more diverse than scientists expected.”"

Read the full story at the Big Island Video News website.