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From natural wonders springs trailblazing science .
BY JARRETT HALEY
owstone
It may be a stretch , but here goes : Everything made possible by modern DNA technology was made possible by Yellowstone National Park .
Specifically , by a particular microorganism — a strain of bacteria that lives in the park ’ s many thermal pools and geysers . How it went from the water ’ s edge to scientific ubiquity is not only a story of UC San Diego alumni , but a story told by a Triton , Robert Lindstrom ’ 73 , in his recent book that is also the namesake of this article . It ’ s the story of bioprospecting , of finding an organism that unlocked one of the most revolutionary scientific advancements of the 20 th century — which is a pretty remarkable legacy for what the untrained eye might consider just a bright yellow goo .
Whether yellow , orange , red or green — the spectrum of colors in Yellowstone ’ s thermal pools and the rest of the the area ’ s magnificence is nothing new , of course . It ’ s been known as a natural wonder ever since it was Native American land , made the world ’ s first National Park in 1872 and now frequented by millions of visitors year after year .
But the first person to take scientific interest in Yellowstone ’ s pools was Thomas Brock , a microbiologist whose curiosity was sparked during a vacation in the mid-1960s . Brock returned to place microscope slides in a few pools , and soon enough , the slides were coated in bacteria , one of which Brock named Thermus aquaticus , from the Greek for “ hot water ,” a nod to the 170 ° -180 ° F-degree environment that makes a perfect home for these golden mats of microbes .
Dubbed Taq for short , it is just one of many microorganisms known collectively as “ thermophiles ,” another Greek nod meaning “ heat-lovers .” Brock did his due diligence in cataloguing this new bacterial species by culturing Taq in a lab and placing a specimen in the American Type Culture Collection ( ATCC ), a national nonprofit that serves largely as a library reference desk for such bioresources . And there Taq remained , waiting for its moment .
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