Betül Kaçar

So you can imagine that probably it already took over the planet if we are able to find these remnants of life.

The problem, however, is that we only work with a very few samples.

If you even call them samples, they're fossils.

And so what do we do right now?

So I'm a biologist.

I like...

making things in the lab.

I like touching organisms.

I like playing with them.

And I like genomes.

I like genes.

I love proteins.

I love all of that.

So our approach was to use the language of life, which is DNA, and resurrect the ancient language that is now extinct.

And bring it back to life by cloning that extinct DNA inside the microbial organism, basically forcing the microbe to speak an ancient dialect.

We've been doing this for some time now with other systems, but it's definitely the beginning in the sense of linking this to biosignatures and connecting them to our understanding of life anywhere.

Exactly.

It is like bringing some ancient organism back to life and having a conversation with them.

And, you know, most of the time you don't understand each other, right?

And they now are awake in an environment that is very different.