ABOVE: Puy de Dôme, the peak where the cloud water samples were collected
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Although researchers have known that photosynthetic microbes are present in the atmosphere, research has yet to show that they are actively photosynthesizing while airborne, says Kevin Dillon, a graduate student in Donna Fennell’s lab at Rutgers University. In a talk at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in San Francisco this week, Dillon reported on the diversity of microbial species in cloud and rainwater along with evidence suggestive of active photosynthesis.
“There is a lot of life in the atmosphere,” Dillon tells The Scientist. “One of the main things we are trying to see is, Are these things in the air active? First though, to get to activity, you have to assess diversity.”
The research team based at Rutgers collaborated with Pierre Amato and Anne-Marie DeLort at the Université Clermont Auvergne and the French National ...
