![]() This water-logged path is out of the ordinary. The water soaks through their pants and shoes, which squelch as the team climbs up on the other bank. Nevertheless, the researchers cross without hesitation. Growing up in little pink houses meaning torrent#The monsoon rains have turned this normally dry creek bed into a rushing torrent filled with sediment. The researchers trek out of sight of their cars, under a barbed wire fence and past a large boulder that they use as a landmark. It’s only going to get hotter, and another storm looms on the horizon. ![]() ![]() Now, he prepares the snake bite kit and first aid supplies, and reminds the group of basic safety procedures. The discipline was always there, with ample uncharted territory to explore. “I associated digging holes in dirt with discovery at a pretty young age,” he says.Īfter exploring a couple of other possible careers (for a while, Carini wanted to be a race car mechanic), he settled on microbiology. Once he even found the skeleton of a squirrel. Chicken bones, in his young imagination, became dinosaur bones. Growing up in Wisconsin, he would cross his backyard to the back of a nearby tavern where patrons threw their trash into an empty lot. Why contend with all of nature’s toughest defenses? Besides the potential scientific payoff, for Carini personally, the search for treasures beneath the surface has been a lifelong interest. Someday that might mean we start putting specific microbes in the soil to help a crop grow in conditions it couldn’t survive otherwise.īut the researchers won’t know for sure whether those kinds of applications will pay off in the long run until they do basic science experiments to observe the tiny organisms in question. While some botanists study plants to look for ways to make them better able to cope with drought, Carini thinks microbiologists can contribute by studying the relationship between plants and microbes, and the evolutionary tricks that microbes use to survive long periods without water and to coexist with their botanical companions. That could be vital information as Arizonans face water cuts and farmers around the world look for ways to provide for a growing population in harsher biological circumstances. They aren’t just doing this for fun: Carini hopes that better understanding microbes will yield insights that can be applied to help us weather the worst effects of climate change. That’s a change Carini sees more broadly in the world of microbiology research. In Carini’s lab, researchers are combining methods that were used several decades ago with the latest technology. But Carini thinks the effort will be well worth it. Once they complete their mission, a whole afternoon of hard work in the lab awaits them, and even then, they won’t know for sure if they’ve found what they’re looking for. They’ll cross a river and climb through the desert with the goal of collecting soil that might have a certain unique single-cell creature in it. It won’t be an easy journey to get to the sampling site. Paul Carini, assistant professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona in the Department of Environmental Science, has assembled his team. Lemmon means the conditions will be perfect for the scientists to collect the samples they need. The overnight rain in this area between Oracle and Mt. And the monsoon moisture they’d been waiting for has arrived. They’re looking for some very specific soil in the Santa Catalina Mountains, amid cactus, tarantulas and rattlesnakes. ![]() TUCSON - It’s a hot and sticky August morning, but that won’t stop a group of microbiologists on a quest. ![]()
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