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Karen Lloyd

@karenlloyd.bsky.social

Subsurface microbiologist/biogeochemist, runner, laugher, wife, parent, TED speaker, Wrigley Prof. at U. Southern California, she/her, got a book coming out in May 2025 called INTRAterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth

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Communications Biology@commsbio.nature.com · 6mo ago

🦠Promethearchaeati are archaea with eukaryote-like genes, yet, living mainly in stable subsurface habitats This perspective explains why their traits like slow growth and fragility might be favored there but not at Earth’s surface @ls4space.bsky.social @karenlloyd.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Ecological drivers of Promethearchaeati’s specialization for deep subsurface environments - Communications Biology

Promethearchaeati are archaea with eukaryote-like genes, yet they live mainly in stable subsurface habitats. Their slow growth, fragile cells, and reliance on partners may explain why these traits are favored underground but not at Earth’s surface.

doi.org

Boris Behncke@borisetneo.bsky.social · last yr.

How does lava sound when it comes to the surface of the Earth? Listen to a lava flow oozing out of its effusive vent high on the southwestern side of #Etna, 28 August 2025. That day no visits by tourists were allowed on the site, which permitted this (relatively) clean recording

Acyn@acyn.bsky.social · last yr.

Jones: I want to bring theology into this because you have all these people that want to give thoughts and prayers. But I was a minister, and that is a form of theological malpractice—when you pray for something you have the power to change.

James Dinneen@jamesdinneen.bsky.social · last yr.

Asgard archaea frozen in Siberia appear to have remained alive for more than 100,000 years based on DNA analysis. Genetic overlap with other Asgards suggests astonishingly long lifespans could be common trait among the closest living relatives of all eukaryotes. Per @karenlloyd.bsky.social etal.🧪

We are unlocking how frozen microbes stay alive for 100,000 years

Microbes found buried deep in Siberian permafrost may be able to survive over extremely long timescales using protein repair genes

newscientist.com

Karen Lloyd@karenlloyd.bsky.social · last yr.

Great new article about the cool stuff we're finding (improbably) alive deep inside Earth's crust! Nice work, @laurapoppick.bsky.social at @quantamagazine.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/the-pursuit-...

The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Unimaginable | Quanta Magazine

A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she studies how they can survive in Earth’s crust, possibly for hundreds or thousands of years, and push li...

quantamagazine.org

Amelia Rotaru@ameliarotaru.bsky.social · last yr.

Check this nice first first-author paper by Ning Hall—now out in Nature Geoscience! Our team had a blast supporting Ning on the isolation workflow, and a few of the standout Methanococcoides strains even trace back to our Danish waters. 🌊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coastal methane emissions driven by aerotolerant methanogens using seaweed and seagrass metabolites - Nature Geoscience

Experiments suggest aerotolerant archaea produce methane in the surface layers of coastal sandy sediments and that this activity is driven by seaweed and seagrass metabolites.

nature.com

Hiro Imachi@hiro-imachi.bsky.social · last yr.

“Isolation of a new methanotroph belonging to Mycobacterium” is now out! Awesome work by my former postdoc Hiromi Kambara, who led this project all the way. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

First isolation of a methanotrophic Mycobacterium reveals ammonia- and pH-tolerant methane oxidation | Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Methane is a significant contributor to climate change (27 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide), and the largest biological sink is methane-oxidizing bacteria: methanotrophs. Alt...

journals.asm.org

Karen Lloyd@karenlloyd.bsky.social · last yr.

This is a nice explanation of how SAR11, a starvation expert, tries to curl up and die when you feed it. This is why the best approach to getting these uncultured organisms to grow is often a sneak attack - feed them but don't feed them too much! @jcamthrash.bsky.social @ahoiching.bsky.social

Cameron Thrash@jcamthrash.bsky.social · last yr.

Our latest, lead by @ahoiching.bsky.social, uncovering physiological vulnerabilities and helping to explain growth rate limitation in SAR11. Cell cycle dysregulation of globally important SAR11 bacteria resulting from environmental perturbation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Karen Lloyd@karenlloyd.bsky.social · last yr.

Organisms that are buried alive for many thousands of years without enough energy to grow could be called "aeonophiles", so we can talk about them more easily. @drewsteen.bsky.social tinyurl.com/4tzecaxn

Defining ultra-slow-growing extremophilic microorganisms as aeonophiles

Nature Microbiology - In environments like the deep subsurface, microorganisms with long doubling times can remain metabolically active for millions of years — we propose referring to this...

tinyurl.com