Betül Kaçar

Yeah, nitrogen is always in the air, but it's not readily available.

in the form that is useful for biology.

So it needs to be converted into ammonia.

Well, we need it for fertilizers.

So that's where they go primarily.

But say, for example, cereal or corns, they use biological nitrogen fixation primarily.

I think what is really interesting here is that as we read more about our past, as I understood more what our planet has gone through, and when you connect biology and molecules to the planet, which is something we have to do if we are serious about finding life.

Because even though we are making our observations at these large scales, ultimately we are looking at an expression of something really, really, really tiny.

Instead, that's the molecule.

So we need to be able to connect molecules to a planet, ultimately.

But that bridge was missing.

So I think our research fills that gap through the planetary biology concept.

And what we are understanding is that just because something isn't around doesn't mean it was useless.

And that our planet has gone through things that actually could teach us a lot about the future because they resemble our future.

Exactly.

We definitely had support from NSF, NASA for sure.

The John Templeton Foundation was very generous with us, as well as the Keck Foundation.

And also the Hypothesis Fund, they've been really generous.

Yeah, they sort of, it's called nimble funding for nimble minds.

I think that, so I got a cold call one day saying, if we give you this much money, what would you do with it?