Masaru K Nobu

About
My lab's/our goal is simple, understanding why life is the way it is, through exploration of evolution, metabolism, and microorganisms. My primary expertise lies in theory (evolution, thermodynamics, ecology) and bioinformatics. All the work presented here has been made possible through collaboration and synergy with excellent peers, postdocs, and students with whom I have been extremely fortunate to connect.

Our history defines who we are and why the way we are. This holds true both for "us" as individuals and "us" spanning all living things on this planet. In our lab, we aim to unravel the essence of biology through retracing its four-billion-year evolutionary journey from its origin to today, using histories recorded in genes and "living fossil" organisms as our guides.

One of our major focuses is on life's origins. Life is believed to have originated on the seafloor, living off of gases seeping out of hydrothermal vents. From there, two types of simple-celled organisms arose – "Bacteria" and "Archaea" – and, later, a fusion between these gave rise to complex-celled organisms "Eukaryotes" who span nearly all organisms visible with the naked eye (animals, plants, etc.) and more. What happened at each origin? How do they define who they/we are today? In recent work, we have begun to uncover ancient metabolisms that define the foundation of life on Earth, acetogenesis at life's origin (ISME J 2023, Nat Eco Evo 2020) and photosynthesis (PNAS 2024), methanogenesis (PNAS Nexus 2023), and syntrophy (Nature 2020) at the origins of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes.

Another focus of our lab is uncovering overlooked capabilities of microorganisms with the goal of pinpointing missing links in the evolution of life and comprehending/protecting Earth's ecosystems. The number of microorganisms on Earth vastly exceeds the number of stars in the universe (a "nonillion"!), yet most microbial species have yet to be studied. We have put efforts in discovery of uncharted microbial species (isolation and "meta"genomics) and uncovering any novel reactions and functions (i.e., metabolism) they may be capable of, including discovery of bacteria that protect their chromosome with an extra membrane "like" eukaryotes (Nat Comm 2020), scavenge dead cells (ISME J 2023), fully rely on partners to make their cell (Nat Microb 2024), and even form metabolic partnerships via methanol exchange (Nature 2025).