The International Center for Deep Life Investigation (IC-DLI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 “Deep Life Paper” and “SiYuan-Ocean Emerging Leaders” Awards.

 

The purpose of the awards is to recognize significant scholarly contributions and outstanding early career researchers in order to encourage further contributions into deep life research and foster the next generation of researchers in this field.

 

2023 “Deep Life Paper”

Out of all the top papers of 2023 proposed by the IC-DLI community, the award committee selected the following five articles as making the most remarkable contributions to the field of deep life.

 

• S. Emil Ruff*, Pauline Humez, Isabella Hrabe de Angelis, Muhe Diao, Michael Nightingale, Sara Cho, Liam Connors, Olukayode O. Kuloyo, Alan Seltzer, Samuel Bowman, Scott D. Wankel, Cynthia N. McClain, Bernhard Mayer & Marc Strous, Hydrogen and dark oxygen drive microbial productivity in diverse groundwater ecosystems, Nature Communications. 2023, 14(1): 3194

“for providing a completely new view of the Deep Biosphere. There is oxygen available in an environment that was considered to be completely anoxic. Any future Deep Biosphere research will have to consider this possibility.”

 

• Laura Eme, Daniel Tamarit, Eva F. Caceres, Courtney W. Stairs, Valerie De Anda, Max E. Schön, Kiley W. Seitz, Nina Dombrowski, William H. Lewis, Felix Homa, Jimmy H. Saw, Jonathan Lombard, Takuro Nunoura, Wen-Jun Li, Zheng-Shuang Hua, Lin-Xing Chen, Jillian F. Banfield, Emily St John, Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Matthew B. Stott, Andreas Schramm, Kasper U. Kjeldsen, Andreas P. Teske, Brett J. Baker & Thijs J. G. Ettema*, Inference and reconstruction of the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes, Nature. 2023, 618(7967): 992-999.

“for demonstrating the phylogenetic placement of Eukaryotes within the Asgard archaeal superphylum, with the archaeal Order Hodarchaeales as its closest sister group, based on a re-analysis of phylogenetically informative genes as well as the presence of newly discovered eukaryotic signature proteins in the Eukaryote-adjacent clades. Their findings establish a potential origin of the eukaryotes as a mesophilic clade from within the Asgard archaea.”

 

• Hanna Zehnle*, Rafael Laso-Pérez, Julius Lipp, Dietmar Riedel, David Benito Merino, Andreas Teske & Gunter Wegener*, Candidatus Alkanophaga archaea from Guaymas Basin hydrothermal vent sediment oxidize petroleum alkanes, Nature Microbiology. 2023, 8(7): 1199-1212.

“for reporting the first enrichments of anaerobic archaea oxidizing petroleum alkane chains of 5-14 carbons, using a newly discovered enzyme, alkyl-CoM reuctases (Acrs). This work identifies a new set of organisms that may be responsible for oil degradation in high temperature wells.”

 

• Jialin Hou, Yinzhao Wang*, Pengfei Zhu, Na Yang, Lewen Liang, Tiantian Yu, Mingyang Niu, Kurt Konhauser, Ben J.Woodcroft & Fengping Wang*, Taxonomic and carbon metabolic diversification of Bathyarchaeia during its coevolution history with early Earth surface environment, Science Advances. 2023, 9(27): eadf5069.

“for taxonomically classifying the globally important archaea Bathyarchaeia for future research, not only illustrating their metabolic characteristics and diversification among different lineages, also providing a new insight into their coevolution history with the tectonics and carbon cycle of early Earth.”

 

• Oliver W. Moore*, Lisa Curti, Clare Woulds, James A. Bradley, Peyman Babakhani, Benjamin J. W. Mills, William B. Homoky, Ke-Qing Xiao, Andrew W. Bray, Ben J. Fisher, Majid Kazemian, Burkhard Kaulich, Andrew W. Dale & Caroline L. Peacock, Long-term organic carbon preservation enhanced by iron and manganese, Nature. 2023, 621(7978): 312-317.

“for groundbreaking insights into the metal-mediated abiotic formation of recalcitrant organic macromolecules, which is a potential major driver behind the long-term preservation of organic carbon in marine sediments.”

 

2023 “SiYuan-Ocean Emerging Leaders”

This award honors early career researchers for their distinguished performance and outstanding potential as leaders in the deep life community. The recipients were selected from among candidates proposed by the members of the IC-DLI community.

 

The “SiYuan-Ocean Emerging Leaders” for 2023 are:

 

Felix J. Elling

Emmy Noether Research Group Leader of Christian Albrecht University of Kiel

Dr. Felix Elling is recognized for his groundbreaking work on the lipid biogeochemistry of marine microbes, advancing our understanding of microbial ecology in the modern ocean and informing paleoenvironmental applications of microbial lipids.

 

Xiyang Dong

Professor of Third Institute of Oceanography, MNR

Dr. Xiyang Dong is recognized for his excellent work on microbiome studies of deep-sea cold seep ecosystems and the mining of microbial genetic resources.

 

IC-DLI warmly congratulates the award winners and pays tribute to their significant contributions to deep life research. The award winners will be invited to give honorable talks at the 2024 IC-DLI webinar.

We would also like to thank our award committee for their time and effort.

 

Award Committee:

Kai-Uwe Hinrichs (University of Bremen), Karen Lloyd (University of Tennessee), Jens Kallmeyer (GFZ-Potsdam), Mohamed Jebbar (Université de Bretagne Occidentale Brest), Mark Lever (The University of Texas), Melody Lindsay (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences), Yinzhao Wang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)