THE BRADLEY LAB - News

AMP'D Blog: Matteo Selci

4/3/2021

Left Longyearbyen in the early morning, 14 hours of navigation through sea-ice by boat were necessary to land in Ny-Ålesund, a small town on the west side of Svalbard that brings together several research institutes from different countries. After some hours spent in courses about rules, safety, and all the precautions against the wildlife present outside of the town, the organization of field and laboratory activities finally began.

The purpose of this scientific campaign is to study the thawing of permafrost, looking for active microbial communities involved in organic matter degradation and greenhouse gas release. So day by day, our research group is divided into two main teams, the "Drilling Team", and the "Lab Team". The "Drilling Team" has to look for spots with ideal geological features and get there by snowmobile. Before starting to drill, reaching the frozen ground is necessary, sometimes shovelling half a meter of snow.

Then, the drill can be placed and activated, trying to get more permafrost cores from as deep as possible. Moreover, to allow safe working conditions, one or two people have to stand on guard against polar bears.

The obtained permafrost cores are then transferred to the laboratory where the "Lab Team" section the frozen cores into smaller parts, and then subsamples are taken to be stored and then analyzed in the next months following a multidisciplinary approach.

Days go fast and we hope to get as many samples as possible!

Twitter: @matteo_selci

James receives the IC-DLI Deep Life Paper of 2020 Award

4/1/2021

James receives the International Center for Deep Life Investigation Deep Life Paper of 2020 Award “for assembling the first global map of subseafloor microbial processes involved in organic carbon degradation and subseafloor microbial energy turnover under different redox states”, published in Science Advances, which was selected from among the most significant research papers of 2020 proposed by the IC-DLI community, based on novelty and potential for long-term impact. James will present the work in a forthcoming Deep Life webinar series.

AMP'D Blog: Sayali Mulay

3/22/2021

As we got off our boat ‘Farm’ that took us safely and steadily to Ny-Ålesund from Longyearbyen, I looked up and tried to digest the fact that after so much hustle and bustle we were finally standing at 79°North! With all the snow-clad mountains and pretty pink sunsets, I was surely already in love with this place.

Cut to day 3, when the wind was howling at a speed of 35 m/sec blowing piles of snow into our faces. We were pacing ourselves to set up our lab. As you can tell, today wasn’t the most pleasant day in Ny-Ålesund. There was a snow blizzard outside, and I was dragging my tiny body squished inside my bulky snowsuit to the laboratory. While barely walking to the lab (mostly being carried by the wind), I thought to myself, “How do people do this? What kind of a willpower does one really have to travel to the most extreme places on earth?

How have I even dreamt of walking on Mars one day if I’m struggling just here?” And with all those thoughts flowing faster than the wind around me, I reached the lab.

We started unboxing the lab instruments, pipette tip boxes, DNA extraction kits and all the other magical scientific equipment to get ready for the big field day. I was looking around and I could see us newly started, fresh graduate students excitedly set up our desks, I could see people discussing experiments and testing instruments, I could hear small cheers here and there with yayys and woopwoops when my friends could find something they were scavenging for in the giant science boxes. And there it was, I had found the secret sauce that drags researchers from different parts of the world to visit such extreme places on our planet. It is the science! I looked at myself in a shiny glass of the laminar flow hood, and I could totally justify that smile I had, “It’s the things we do for science.” I whispered to myself.

When I walked back to my room, I sat down and paused for a moment. I could still hear the wind gushing, but this time it was out of my window. I gathered all the things I had felt throughout today, and if I had one word to describe those feelings ‘gratefulness’ would top the list. To be working with such great scientists, discussing adulting with the coolest fellow grad students and doing science at one of the most beautiful yet brutal places on our planet is an out of the world experience. And I am eagerly looking forward to the big field day and whatever that comes out of it!

James features on BBC Earth Podcast!

3/21/2021

What the deep ocean can teach us about life.

"Strange creatures that eke out a life in a world so difficult and different to ours its hard to even imagine".

James features on the BBC Earth Podcast, discussing the survival of life in the deep biosphere, extreme energy limitation, and the implications for alien life.

Listen here!
Feature starting at 07.45

AMP’D Blog Guest Post: Margaret Cramm

3/21/2021

As a Svalbard “first-timer”, I am awed by the crisp air, bright fresh show, and mountains that seem to rise out the ocean on Svalbard. It is a beautiful place. Our stay in Longyearbyen was a nice transition into the field. There are two ways to get to our research base in Ny-Ålesund – a 15 minute flight or a 12 to 16 hour boat ride. Our team opted for the boat ride.

At 4 am we boarded the MS Farm captained by Stig Henningsen to travel from Longyearbyen to Ny-Ålesund. Our route took us through the sound of Forlandsundet separating Prins Karls Forland and the west side of Spitsbergen. The views from the boat were amazing! Even though the wind was biting cold as we stood on deck to enjoy the view, we were warmed by the sun in a clear blue sky. Our boat broke through shallow sea ice as we travelled northward. We travelled through pancake ice, a type of sea ice that looks like pancakes floating on the surface of the water – this is a phenomenon I did not know existed until now!

After around 16 hours on the boat we arrived in Ny-Ålesund, the research town that will host us during the rest of our stay in Svalbard. Ny-Ålesund hosts permanent research institutes from several different countries. We are being hosted by the Norwegian Polar Institute. Our research site is ~3 km northwest of the town and there we plan to drill permafrost samples for microbiological analyses. Wish us luck!

Twitter: @microbeMAC

AMP’D Blog Guest Post: Matteo Selci

3/18/2021

After 10 days spent in a "quarantine" hotel in Oslo and a bunch of Covid Test, we are finally at Longyearbyen, Svalbard, the last step before the beginning of our field activities. After we landed, it took me just a few minutes to understand where I am and think "WHAT AN AMAZING PLACE!!!!". High white picks, a beautiful fjord, and multiple lines of coloured houses that follow the side of the hill. A week ago, the sun has come back after four months of darkness. The town is completely covered by snow, and the temperature is around -20°C, perceived as -30°C. The air is so cold that less than an hour spent outside is enough to make the eyelashes and the beard completely frozen. However, low temperature and flowing wind didn't put our spirit down, so, yesterday we moved to visit a glacier called Larsbreen to enjoy the incredible landscape visible from there, and it was gorgeous.

Anyway, our time in Longyearbyen is about to end. Tomorrow in the early morning, we'll head to Ny-Ålesund to start our work. I am grateful to have experienced some days here in Longyearbyen, and I hope it is just a goodbye.
Twitter: @matteo_selci

AMP’D blog #2: Meet the team!

3/12/2021

The AMP’D field team comprises microbiologists, biogeochemists, geophysicists and modellers, with expertise in a wide range of environments from glaciers and permafrost to the deep subsurface, coral reefs, and hot springs! Excitingly, this will be the first time that many of us will be working in the field together (and even the first time meeting each other for some!).

The AMP’D field team is:

Karen Lloyd, AMP’D Lead PI
Karen is an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA. She studies deep subsurface microbes “in the wild” and tries to determine what they’re doing out there that’s helpful for Earth processes. Coming from an oceanography background, this is only her second project in permafrost, so she is excited to see whether microbes have similar strategies for surviving in oceanic vs. terrestrial energy-starved environments.
Twitter: @archaearama

Tatiana Vishnivetskaya, AMP’D Co-PI.
Tatiana is a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA. She is fascinated in uncovering microbial biodiversity in deep subsurface permafrost, and other extreme environments. Her interests lay in understanding how microbial community changes during environmental change. She also wants to know what makes the microbial genus ubiquitous enabling it to occupy different habitats. In her research, she applies a variety of classical microbiological and next-generation high-throughput techniques. In collaboration with Russian colleagues (IPBPSS, Andrey Abramov) she created YouTube videos to extend public knowledge on Siberian permafrost area and research ongoing there.
Twitter: @tvishniv

Brianna Green
Brianna is a Master's student at University of Tennessee Knoxville, working under Dr. Andrew Steen. Her research experience throughout undergrad would be described as interdisciplinary. From assessing Uranium concentration in water in soils, analyzing oceanographic data, and culturing Cave and Hot Spring Sulfur-bacteria, she has built a research interest in biogeochemistry. Having done fieldwork in hot springs, on a hot summer day in August, she knows Svalbard will be MUCH different. This will be her first time in Svalbard and first time going outside of the United States. While daunting, she is looking forward to the adventure as well as the opportunity to meet others in the scientific community and gain more field work experience!
Twitter: @Geo_BRIology

Sayali Mulay
Sayali Mulay is a first year PhD student with Dr. Karen Lloyd from University of Tennessee and Dr. Mirea Podar from Oak Ridge National Lab in Knoxville. She got interested in astrobiology after watching the Cosmos series by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. She is fascinated by the ability which the microbes possess to survive the most hostile places on earth and is looking forward to studying these hardy microbes to design better tools to look for signatures of extant or extinct life on other planets.
Twitter: @mulay_sayali

Katie Sipes
Katie is a PhD student with Karen Lloyd at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA in the Microbiology department. This will be Katie’s 3rd trip to Ny-Ålesund and the second trip to drill permafrost. In 2018, Katie planned a trip to drill active layer permafrost in Ny Alesund along side another group’s fieldwork. After securing equipment and guidance from a variety of locations and agencies (NSF, U.S Ice Drilling Program, Jon’s Machine Shop, Jonathan Holmgren, Forest Banks, Geoff Miller) Katie executed the drilling plan near the Bayelva permafrost monitoring site. Katie has been studying the permafrost metagenomes, geochemistry and soil enzymes in the Svalbard permafrost for her dissertation. Katie is looking to defend her work within a year and will be ready for the next step. She hopes to continue studying metagenomics in permafrost/extreme environments in the future.
Twitter: @KatieSipes42

Donato Giovannelli
Donato is an Assistant Professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and a visiting scholar at the Earth-Life Science Institute, Japan. His main interest is in the co-evolution of Earth and life, and how life influences planetary scale processes. He was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant to look for the influence of trace elements on the evolution of microbial metabolism. During the AMP'D expedition he will look for carbon export from the melting permafrost to the fjord ecosystem. Get more info on Donato's research group at www.donatogiovannelli.com
Twitter: @d_giovannelli

Matteo Selci
Matteo is a Ph.D. student with Donato Giovannelli at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. He is interested in the thriving of life in the subsurface. Especially, he wants to understand the role of subsurface microbial communities in biogeochemical cycles, along the subduction zones. Svalbard expedition is the third field trip for Matteo, after Costa Rica in 2019, and Chile in 2020. After two warm places, he will experience a cold one for the first time. He is very enthusiastic to get there and have the opportunity to study an environment so particular.
Twitter: @matteo_selci

James Bradley
James is a Lecturer (Assistant-Professor) at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and a Humboldt Fellow at the GFZ German Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany. He is fascinated by the interactions between life and its environment – particularly extreme environments! He wants to know if ancient microbes that have been frozen and dormant for thousands of years will ‘wake up’ when Arctic permafrost begins to thaw. James was recently in Svalbard during the long dark Polar Night of 2020/21 studying the winter snowpack, and is excited to go back to Svalbard to witness the return of the sun!
Twitter: @drbradbrad

Margaret Cramm
Margaret is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London. She is interested in “misplaced” microorganisms – those found in environments not suitable for their growth – and how these organisms respond to their environment as it changes. She is particularly interested in using dormant organisms to explore life’s history. She has conducted fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic. Her visit to Ny-Ålesund will be a new high latitude record for herself.
twitter: @microbeMAC

Andrey Abramov
Andrey is head of the Soil Cryology department at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science (IPCBPSS RAS) at the Russian Academy of Sciences. His main field of expertise is aseptic drilling, thermal state of permafrost, searching for the oldest and coldest frozen ground on Earth. He dreams about drilling on Mars one day. His field experience covers the Arctic (Russia and Alaska), Antarctica (6 campaigns, including 2 circumnavigations and one to Dry Valleys) and high mountain areas, preferably of volcanic origin (Kamchatka and Caucasus). His main driving force is gravitation - he likes to include some freeriding or paragliding to the expeditions.
Instagram: @forestpro

Julia Boike
Julia is a Senior Researcher in the Permafrost Section at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Potsdam and Professor for Polar Geography at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany). Julia is leading a group of six from AWI, comprised of researchers, engineers, students and one photographer. Our mission is to maintain the long-term observatory site at Bayelva, test some cool new sensors (MOSES), and apply our permafrost thaw protocol (T-MOSAiC).
Twitter: @AWI_de

The wider AMP’D project also involves Co-Investigators: Andrew Steen (University of Tennessee), Tullis C Onstott (Princeton University), Robert Hettich (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and John Cliff (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

AMP’D blog #1: Arctic Microbial Permafrost Degradation

3/10/2021

James Bradley

Permafrost at high latitudes contains around one third of the world’s soil organic carbon. This frozen carbon is increasingly vulnerable to thaw and microbial degradation as climate change intensifies, potentially leading to large-scale release of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere. Understanding this threat is the motivation behind our project ‘AMP’D: Arctic Microbial Permafrost Degradation’, primarily funded by the US Department of Energy, with additional support from the British Antarctic Survey. The Norwegian Polar Institute will be providing logistical and operational support in the field.

Our team is travelling to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, which at 79°N is only a few hundred miles from the North Pole. Once there, we will drill into the frozen Arctic ground to understand how climate change is changing soil biology and chemistry, and driving carbon dioxide and methane release from the soil.

Left to right: Katie Sipes, James Bradley, Tatiana Vishnivetskaya, Karen Lloyd

One year later than originally planned (due to the Covid-19 shut-down cancelling our field work last year a few weeks before we were scheduled to go), during which a further 36 billion tonnes of CO2 have been released by humans to the atmosphere, our team of eleven scientists have made it from five different countries to Oslo, Norway, where we are confined to hotel quarantine before it is safe to continue on to Svalbard.

Our extremely complex Covid-compliant logistical plan has encountered numerous difficulties along the way, and is still under constant review, as we lose count of the number of flights we’ve changed. Yet we remain in remarkably high spirits.

In a matter of days, Covid-tests permitting, our whole team will be arriving in Longyearbyen - Svalbard’s largest settlement of just upwards of 2,000 people, to embark on a ship that will sail us further up the western coast of Spitsbergen to our field site.

Check back in and follow our adventure over the coming days and weeks!

The AMP’D field team is: Karen Lloyd (Lead PI), Tatiana Vishnivetskaya (co-PI), Brianna Green, Sayali Mulay and Katie Sipes from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA; Donato Giovannelli and Matteo Selci from the University of Naples, Italy, James Bradley from Queen Mary University of London, UK, and the GFZ German Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany; Margaret Cramm from Queen Mary University of London, UK, Andrey Abramov at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science (IPCBPSS RAS) at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Julia Boike at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

The wider AMP’D project also involves Co-Investigators: Andrew Steen (University of Tennessee), Tullis C Onstott (Princeton University), Robert Hettich (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and John Cliff (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

Submit an abstract to out modelling session at Goldschmidt 2021!

2/18/2021

James will be convening a session at Goldschmidt 2021 (along with Dominic Hulse (UCR) and Emily Zakem (USC)) on modeling microbial and biogeochemical processes (Session 8f). We have fantastic keynote (Dr. Stephanie Dutkiewicz, MIT) and invited speakers (Dr. Rui Zhao, U Del) lined up. Check it out below and submit an abstract by 26th Feb!

Two book chapters published in: Microbial Life in the Cryosphere and Its Feedback on Global Change

1/18/2021

James has authored two chapters in the newly published book: 'Microbial Life in the Cryosphere and Its Feedback on Global Change', edited by Susanne Liebner and Lars Ganzert, and published by De Gruyter. Chapter 12 'Glacial surfaces: functions and biogeography' is jointly written by Stefanie Lutz (GFZ Potsdam) and James Bradley. Chapter 13 ' Microbial dynamics in forefield soils following glacier retreat' is written by James Bradley. You can explore these chapters and more about the book here.