introduction journal classrooms science crew partners
Lost City Expedition: Mission
stephanoimage

Albert Colman

Albert Colman holds a Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW). His research at the Lost City focuses on phosphorus biogeochemistry. Phosphorus is an important nutrient, serving as a key constituent of cell membranes and genetic material and it plays a major role in the transport of energy within cells. In collaboration with Dr. Marilyn Fogel (CIW) and Dr. Ruth Blake (Yale University), Albert is measuring the stable isotope composition of oxygen in phosphate (PO43-) adsorbed and coprecipitated with the mineral phases in the Lost City vent structures. It is hoped that this measurement will help tease out the relative importance of biological vs. abiological processes in cycling phosphate in the vent environment. It is also possible that the vent phosphate oxygen composition may offer clues to nutrient cycling in this region of the ocean going back to the last ice age.