Press Images Professor Norman R. Pace. To download high-resolution click here: Credit: Norman R. Pace.

Two specimens of the largest bacterium, Epulopiscium fischelsoni. The organism, which lives in the intestines of the reef surgeonfish, has an unusual mode of cell division. Daughter cells develop inside the mother and are released with the destruction of the mother cell. Norman R. Pace of the University of Colorado, Boulder, will discuss the diversity of bacteria and other microbes during a March 9 Frontiers of Science Lecture at the University of Utah. To download high-resolution click here: Credit: Esther Angert and Norman R. Pace.

Lecturer: Norman R. Pace, professor of biology, University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Wednesday March 9, 2005
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Building Auditorium, University of Utah

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Planet Earth is teeming with life. Recent work by Professor Norman Pace and other researchers suggests that single-celled microorganisms probably comprise more than half of all species on Earth. Remarkably little is known about the natural microbial world because laboratory cultivation has been required for the study of microorganisms. However, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of organisms observed microscopically in the environment can be grown in culture.

Pace’s research group has developed molecular genetic techniques that allow them to characterize naturally occurring organisms without culturing them in the lab. DNA sequences of these organisms are used to generate evolutionary trees that provide a framework for identifying unknown organisms. “We have developed these techniques in the context of studying several types of ecosystems. Some examples include high-temperature ecosystems (Yellowstone National Park vents and submarine hydrothermal vents), hydrocarbon-damaged aquifers, marine picoplankton, deep subsurface environments, and medical syndromes such as tuberculosis and Crohn’s Disease,” says Pace. “Many new organisms have been discovered, some profoundly different from anything previously known.”

Pace’s research continues to identify the biochemical and genetic threads that link all organisms and to enrich our awareness of the seemingly boundless, sometimes quite improbable, ecological niches that living things occupy on Earth.

Pace received a B.A. (1964) from Indiana University and a Ph.D. (1967) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has held faculty positions at the University of Colorado (1969-1984, 1999-present), Indiana University (1984-1996), and the University of California, Berkeley (1996-1999). Pace has published nearly 200 research articles in journals such as Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology by the National Academy of Sciences, considered the nation’s highest award in microbiology.

The University of Utah College of Science and College of Mines and Earth Sciences are sponsoring four Frontiers of Science lectures during the 2004-2005 academic year. The presentations are free and open to the public. Videotapes and DVDs of the lectures are available to the public for $10.

For more information please contact the College of Science at (801) 581-6958 or visit www.science.utah.edu