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Project Progress

During this reporting period, project members collectively developed and led the first deep-sea drilling expedition to be principally focused on the exploration of life deep beneath the seafloor. Project members also undertook the first community-wide genetic assays of life deep beneath the seafloor, documented broad patterns of microbial respiration deep beneath the seafloor, tested a hypothesis of thermodynamic competition in deep subsurface communities, and used multiple molecular biomarkers to identify the members of both hydrothermal and anaerobic methane-oxidizing communities in shallow marine sediments.