Why ants farm fungus | Kristin Burnum-Johnson | TEDxSteptoe Street

We are in a golden age of biochemistry. We now have the tools to truly understand complex microbial systems on a molecular level. Microbes, or microscopic organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, perform amazing tasks in nature. And if we understand these tasks, on a molecular level, we can harness their power to produce biofuels, bioproducts, and even therapeutics for human diseases. Learning from nature’s ways to leverage sustainable products is smart for our future. Recorded July 2023, Richland, WA Dr. Kristin Burnum-Johnson is a Senior Scientist and Team Lead of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory’s Metabolomics group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Kristin earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Vanderbilt University with Prof. Richard M. Caprioli in 2008, and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at PNNL with Dr. Richard D. Smith in 2010. Kristin was selected to receive a 2019 Early Career Research Program award from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. At PNNL, her research is dedicated to characterizing the molecular landscape of heterogeneous samples using novel mass spectrometry approaches to address specific biological, medical, and environmental research questions. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

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