Life in Darwin's dust: intercontinental transport and survival of microbes in the nineteenth century.

Charles Darwin, like others before him, collected aeolian dust over the Atlantic Ocean and sent it to Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in Berlin. Ehrenberg's collection is now housed in the Museum of Natural History and contains specimens that were gathered at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Geochemical analyses of this resource indicated that dust collected over the Atlantic in 1838 originated from the Western Sahara, while molecular-microbiological methods demonstrated the presence of many viable microbes.

Microcolonial rock inhabiting fungi and lichen photobionts: evidence for mutualistic interactions.

On nutrient-poor rock surfaces, yeast-like black fungi (also called microcolonial fungi, MCF) may derive organic carbon either from the atmosphere or from interactions with other rock-inhabiting microorganisms. Interactions between free-living rock inhabiting heterotrophic fungi and phototrophic algae were investigated using axenic cultures. Five typical MCF strains were incubated with pure cultures of four lichen photobionts isolated from lichens growing in similar locations.