Today, Dr. Paula Welander, Associate Professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University (and #DocMartian #4) joins the #QualityQuorum to discuss the work she and her colleagues are doing probing at early life by studying lipid biosignatures that can appear in the fossil record—and the role that cholesterol and related molecules have on microbial life.

Host: Mark O. Martin

Guest: Paula Welander

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Links for this episode

• A blog post I wrote about the truly remarkable late Dr. Abigail Salyers, who taught me the importance of being authentic as a scientist, educator, and human being.
• An essay about the Great Oxidation Event early in our planet’s history.
• Information about BIFs—banded iron formations.
• An overview of stromatolites, both popular and scholarly.
• The Gunflint stromatolites.
• The story of WIlliam Schopf and stromatolites.
• The fluid mosaic model of cell membranes.
• The role of cholesterol in membranes.
• A nice description of some of Dr. Welander’s work with hopanoids.
• Hopanoids in cyanobacterial membranes.
• An overview of biosignatures relevant to geobiology.
• The cell membrane and other differences of archaea.
• Adaptations to hyperthermophily in archaea and bacteria.
• The “Echoes of Life” book mentioned in the podcast.
• A fascinating article by Jo Handelsman and coauthors about implicit and unconscious bias in science.  Here is an update on this work, and a video presentation.  
• A really interesting video interview with Dr. Welander.
• Dr. Welander’s departmental/divisional website.
• Dr. Welander’s laboratory website

Intro music is by Reber Clark

Send your questions and comments to [email protected]