Brook Nunn

Brook L. Nunn is a Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, co-lead of NASA’s Network for Life Detection (NfoLD), and Director of the Environmental Proteomics Cost Center at UW. Her lab’s research uses mass spectrometry-based proteomics to study life in unusual and extreme environments, with a particular focus on complex, low-biomass, and chemically challenging samples collected from field sites such as hydrothermal systems, hypersaline environments, sea ice, and other analog settings relevant to astrobiology. She develops methods to recover and measure proteins from difficult matrices including sediments, rocks, brines, biofilms, and environmentally altered materials, with the goal of understanding how organisms function at the edge of habitability and which molecular signatures can be used to detect life. Her work connects environmental proteomics, extremophile biology, and life-detection science by asking how biology persists in complex matrices and how we can reliably recognize its signals in samples where life is sparse, stressed, or hard to measure.  She is also an oceanographer by training (PhD in Chemical Oceanography) working on time series modeling of metaproteomic data to understand how microbiomes influence the ecosystem and how the ecosystem influences those microbiomes.  

My research interests include

• Understanding how different organisms adapt to their unique surroundings by examining their protein expression.
• Biogeochemical recycling of organic matter, specifically proteins, in the marine water column and in sediments.
• Understanding the chemical interactions between bacteria and particles in the ocean.
• Examining why proteins are preserved in sediments for long periods of time.