Discoveries
FINDING THE ROOT OF THE FAMILY TREE Biological science researcher explores biodiversity among microscopic lifeforms
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n a world of vast and wondrous sights, Matthew Brown finds fascination all around—in the cracks of sidewalks, scummy pond water or the soil around a barn. An associate professor in Mississippi State University’s Department of Biological Sciences, he’s made a career out of identifying the microscopic life that surrounds us. Through the Brown Laboratory of Social and Evolutionary Protistology, he and other Mississippi State scientists, faculty and students are exploring the highly diverse group of eukaryotic organisms known as protists. “We’re looking to understand biodiversity," Brown explained. "We want to understand what is present in the environment around us
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By Susan Lassetter, Photo by Logan Kirkland & Submitted and, the thing is, a lot of that biodiversity has yet to be discovered.” Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells contain a true nucleus. This includes all plants, animals and fungi, as well as the lesserknown protists. Many of these protists exist as single-celled organisms. “There are lots of organisms that are really closely related to animals, really closely related to plants and really closely related to fungi that are all unicellular eukaryotes,” he explained. “My lab is focused on seeing how these organisms are all related to one another.” These evolutionary ties are known as the tree of life, or the family tree, of all eukaryotic organisms.
“If you think of it like a tree, the parts that have been really well studied—the plants, animals and fungi—are just the tips of the branches,” Brown explained. “Most of the actual diversity is in the unicellular organisms that make up the trunk and roots. And that hasn’t been studied nearly as thoroughly.” To fill that gap, Brown and his fellow researchers have perfected ways to study these protists without the need of culturing— collecting them directly from the environment rather than growing them in a laboratory for study. A recent National Science Foundation grant of $1.1 million is supporting Brown’s efforts to study Amoebozoa, a vastly diverse type of eukaryotic protist.
