I am a co-author on a new paper that just came out.
Nutritional niches of potentially endemic, facultatively anaerobic heterotrophs from an isolated Antarctic terrestrial hydrothermal refugium elucidated through metagenomics. Craig W. Herbold, Stephen E. Noell, Charles K. Lee, Chelsea J. Vickers, Matthew B. Stott, Jonathan A. Eisen, Ian R. McDonald & S. Craig Cary. Environmental Microbiome volume 19, Article number: 104 (2024)
Figure 1 from the paper.
This came from a long ago collaboration in which I was involved with the lab of Craig Cary, who very sadly passed away recently. I got to know Craig from working with him (and Barbara Campbell and others) on a genome project in the late 2000s (see Adaptations to Submarine Hydrothermal Environments Exemplified by the Genome of Nautilia profundicola. PLoS Genet 5(2): e1000362). While we were working on that project, Craig and Ian McDonald contacted me about a proposal they were putting together to do some sequence based studies of microbes from Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. I became a collaborator on their project and their grant was funded in late 2008. Anyway – long long story. Eventually, Craig and others planned a trip to Erebus and alas I was unable to go but a post doc in my lab Morgan Langille was able to join them. And around that time Craig (Cary) hired Craig (Herbold) to work on the project. And the Craigs did multiple things but the part of the project in which I was to be involved did not happen immediately.
But then Craig Herbold moved to New Zealand in the beginning of 2024 and he and Craig Cary resurrected the project. And Craig H. and others (with a little bit of input from me here and there) wrote up the paper that I describe above.
Very sadly, in March Craig Cary passed away. For me, this paper is in his honor. Craig Cary was one of the people who really got me interested in broad studies of microbial diversity from all environments.
