Where It All Began

A 91���� professor researches the deep-sea origin of life on Earth.

Jessica Kokesh MPC ’24, Marketing & Communications

When an email from the president of the National Academy of Sciences popped into Katrina Twing’s inbox last summer, she tossed it into her spam folder.

The NAS had just invited her to speak at the 2024 91���� Japanese-American-German Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium. For Twing, a microbiology professor at Weber State, it seemed a little unbelievable that someone had reached out about her postdoctoral research on microbes and ocean hydrothermal vents — especially since she was no longer actively involved with deep-sea research missions.

“I absolutely love teaching, but it takes a lot of time, so I don’t go to sea anymore. I’ve turned my focus to projects that undergraduate students can be directly involved in,” she said. “So I got an email … and it said we’d like to invite you to be part of this prestigious symposium in Japan, all expenses paid. And I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’”

A follow-up email later that day from a symposium committee member made it clear the invitation was legitimate, and out of the spam folder it went. But it still took some time for Twing to realize how special of an opportunity this was. She would be one of only six American speakers at the conference and the sole American representing the field of biology.

“I still have goosebumps,” she said. “It’s really amazing, and honestly, it feels like a bigger honor because that research is not my whole life these days.”

That research? The origin of life on Earth.

The Lost City

Deep beneath the surface of the mid-Atlantic sits a unique geological site that may hold the answers to the origin of life.

Discovered in 2000, the Lost City is a field of large hydrothermal vent chimneys, white mineral structures rising as tall as 200 feet from the seabed and venting heated water, minerals and gases from the Earth’s crust into the ocean.

Hydrothermal vents can be found worldwide, usually along the boundaries of the plates in the Earth’s crust, and host distinctive ecosystems fueled by the chemicals in the released fluids. The Lost City is estimated to be 120,000 years old. It features unique geology and geochemistry not found in other undersea vents.

Twing became fascinated with the Lost City when she read a paper about its discovery as an undergraduate at Clark University.

“A completely unique type of ecosystem was being discovered, and I just became completely enamored,” she said. “And as a sophomore, I said, ‘I want to go see these types of environments and deep-sea volcanoes.’”

And she did.

While getting her master’s degree, Twing participated in her first deep sea expedition in 2008, diving in the submersible Alvin — better known for its numerous expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic. In 2015 and 2018, she joined research teams heading out to sea to study the Lost City and collect samples from it. The expeditions lasted six weeks.

“It was absolutely amazing to be there, to be on the team, and to be working on something that 19-year-old me sitting in a classroom had first been interested in,” she said.

Serpentinization

The geological and geochemical process that makes the Lost City so interesting to researchers is called serpentinization. When olivine, a mineral abundant in the Earth’s crust, comes into contact with water at the right pressure and temperature, it transforms into another mineral called serpentine. This process releases hydrogen, methane and other essential molecules to create and sustain life in an extreme environment without sunlight.

“There’s always this chicken and the egg question of how the origin of life happened. You need life in order to get life. So where did the first cells or first life come from?” Twing said. “And a place where you can have rocks and water combining to give you organic molecules, which are essentially life molecules, is a pretty good guess.”

Serpentinization only occurs underwater, but evidence of it exists on land in portions of the ocean’s ancient crust pushed to the surface by tectonic plates. Twing’s Ph.D. involved analyzing microbes found 40 meters under the surface of such areas in Northern California.

Twing said studying the microbes found in these environments is important to understanding not only the origin of life on Earth but also how we might be able to find life on other planets.

“I think it’s human nature to ask where we come from. But we’re closer to being able to answer it than ever before,” she said. “I don’t know if we’re going to find a conclusive answer … but I think that each little piece of this puzzle that we can kind of click into place can help us understand where we’ve been, maybe understand the world around us now a little bit better and understand the future.”

The Frontiers of Science

Twing wrapped up her postdoctoral research in 2019 but still publishes scientific papers about the Lost City and the California site. In the years since, she’s moved away from the sea and toward the classrooms at Weber State.

“I have a career that goes in a lot of different directions now, and the biggest direction is toward my students,” she said. That’s why the invitation to speak at the Frontiers of Science symposium came as such a surprise. “To still be acknowledged on such a large scale for something that wasn’t the direction I’m actively pursuing made it even more of an honor.”

Twing traveled to Kyoto, Japan, for the symposium in October, joining American scientific colleagues from the University of Colorado; University of California, Berkeley; Michigan State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She said that connecting with international scientists and listening to their presentations helped spark new excitement for science.

“I kind of feel like I’m in a new era as a scientist,” she said. “I feel more reinvigorated with science than I have in a long time. This is a new phase of my career that I haven’t really been at before … to have the ideas, to understand the content and to have that confidence of where I’ve been and knowing how far I can go.”

While in Japan, she connected with the two other researchers who were speaking about the origins of life, and they began brainstorming new ideas and outlining proposals for research.

“In putting together this talk, I’d been removed from it enough that I was learning things again and maybe seeing where there were some kind of gaps in the research that I’m excited to fill,” she said.

Department of Microbiology Chair Michele Culumber said the Frontiers of Science symposium was an extraordinary opportunity for Twing and she’ll continue to be a campus leader in undergraduate research.

“Dr. Twing’s research in early earth history, deep ocean microbiology and environmental microbiology have led to a number of student projects and publications and has been of great interest to students in our department,” Culumber said. “She has a great enthusiasm for research, and she really loves sharing her passion with students.”

Twing looks forward to seeing how her students can be included in future research about the Lost City and the origins of life. Though expeditions to the site probably aren’t in the near future, there are still plenty of samples and data from the first expeditions that need to be studied.

Twing’s microbial ecology course, a required class for microbiology students, is often the first time students study microbes outside of the human body. At least once a semester (usually after a lecture about the ocean), one of those students will come to Twing’s office and ask about careers outside of medicine and dentistry.

“Those are always particularly special moments when they see there’s another whole world out there,” she said. “This journey started 20 years ago with a class I liked, with just a question that sparked my interest. I hope that resonates with my students.”