Life on the Edge Lab

An Exploration of the Preservation of Organic Matter From Extremophiles in Terrestrial Acid Mine Drainages

• Aimed to discern the degree of organic preservation in acidic environments on Earth for potential application to select acid-saline environments on Mars. This knowledge could be applied to the methods used by Mars rovers at NASA for optimal data recording.

• Responsibilities involved analyzing data from different samples of organic matter found in acid mine drainages (AMD) to compare the detection of fatty acids across different methods of data acquisition.