Penelope Boston (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology), speleologist and geomicrobiologist specialist of extremophile organisms realized sterile sampling of gypsum drillcores by making small boreholes inside large crystals under aseptic conditions.
Geomicrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon with a NASA funded team is researching a particular strain the Halomonadaceae family, named GFAJ-1, isolated and cultured from sediments collected along the shore of Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park in eastern California.