This is not one of the wells used in the study, but it shows what a site looks like during the drilling process. (Image courtesy of the MSEEL (Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory www.mseel.org), where the Wrighton Lab is also conducting research.)
“Microbiologists often seek life in the planet’s extremes — from below ice sheets to within geysers. But Appalachian Basin scientists found hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, also provides its own inhabited extremes in their backyard.”
In Discover magazine’s list of top 100 science stories of 2016 is a study from The Ohio State University researchers that led to the discovery of novel bacteria in wells. The work from Kelly Wrighton and her colleagues was made possible in part through the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program led by the DOE JGI and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL). The full list of top 2016 science stories appears in the January 2017 issue of Discover – click here to see the article.
Revisit the study, which we covered as a Science Highlight when the paper appeared in , here.