NAI-supported astrobiologists have gathered enough DNA from the atmosphere to apply molecular methods to samples from two large dust plumes that came across the Pacific from Asia in the spring of 2011. In the samples, they found more than 2,100 unique species compared to only 18 found in the very same plumes using traditional methods of culturing. Their research was recently published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology , and provides new insight into how life survives in Earth environments at the fringes of what we consider habitable.