Big mysteries unlocked with small molecules

GEOCHEMIST Kliti Grice never thought she’d end up in a career looking so far into the past.

Her work involves analysing tiny molecules to understand what happened hundreds of millions of years ago.

Professor Grice deciphers the isotopic signals on organic molecules, hoping to find clues to what occurred before, during, and after the Earth’s five big mass extinctions.

It was this work that earned her the title of Western Australia’s Scientist of the Year in 2022.

The award adds to a long list of accolades Professor Grice has received, including Curtin University’s 2019 STEM senior research award and being elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Despite her success, however, she said her current line of work was not on the radar when she started out.

Growing up on a hobby farm in Yorkshire, Professor Grice’s love of animals inspired her to be a veterinarian.

But the fierce competition to study the course made her select chemistry instead, one of her top subjects, along with art.

From there, she enrolled to do her PhD, a decision that has taken her all over the world.

And she believes her current work allows her to combine her old loves of art and chemistry.

“What I do now is reconstruct in a creative way the ancient environments and conditions,” Professor Grice told Business News.

Discoveries

Professor Grice was part of an international team that investigated the cause of the planet’s worst mass extinction.

During the Permian-Triassic extinction event (250 million years ago), it is estimated about 95 per cent of marine life and 70 per cent of terrestrial animals were wiped out.

The team of scientists established that the ocean in the Permian-Triassic period had become toxic due to global warming, causing most living animals to die.

The team studied sediments of core materials from the time and found remains of organisms that used toxic hydrogen sulfide for photosynthesis.

The results were published in the internationally recognised journal Science and were front page news around the world, including on the cover of The New York Times.

At the time, parallels were drawn between this mass extinction and the way human-induced climate change had altered the planet in more recent times.

However, Professor Grice said it was unlikely we were experiencing the sixth largest mass extinction now.

“We might be at the very beginning of one, but they take place over millions of years,’ she said.

“It won’t be in our lifetime unless an asteroid hits earth.” More recently, Professor Grice and her team helped survey the amount of microplastics in the ocean.

The team built a filter for solo yachtsman Jon Sanders to use to collect ocean samples as he circumnavigated the world for the 11th time. The trip took him to remote areas of the globe never tested for microplastics before.

Upon Mr Sanders’ return, Curtin scientists analysed the seawater samples collected at 177 locations across his journey and found microplastics were present in most of them.

Centre build

Professor Grice completed her PhD at the University of Bristol and became one of the first three dissertation students in the world to work on specific analytical technology.

After a post-doctoral position at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel, Professor Grice was recruited by Curtin University to help it set up its own department with similar equipment.

She didn’t know what to expect when moving here in 1998.

“I’d never been to Australia; I just moved,” Professor Grice said.

The move was personally challenging, and she initially found it difficult to make friends and settle in WA.

Professor Grice was also thrown in the deep end professionally, tasked with applying for an Australian Research Council grant to obtain the new equipment.

The team was awarded the funding and Curtin became one of the only places in the world with the technology capable of compound-specific isotope analysis.

The technology has a broad range of uses, including determining the provenance of foods such as honey and eggs; testing the compounds in drugs; studying the impacts of forest fires; and examining how Aboriginal rock art has changed over time.

Almost a decade after moving, in 2008, Professor Grice founded the Western Australian Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at the university.

The lab she runs now has 25 staff and several different types of equipment.

“It’s an expensive science to do because it’s lab intensive, it’s field intensive, it’s very intricate,” Professor Grice said.

Fortunately, last year, Professor Grice was one of 17 researchers nationally to receive a prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship.

The fellowship, worth almost $3 million, will support her research on exceptional fossil preservation.

Professor Grice’s team will analyse fossil samples from around the world from time periods including the Jurassic and the Miocene.

The research will focus on how these exceptional fossils are formed and aims to provide possible industrial applications for the natural phenomena.

Professor Grice said it was a relief to have been awarded the grant as it afforded her time and financial security for her department.

“I write proposals all the time, and now I feel like I can breathe,” she said.

“There’s enough funding to really do good quality science.”

While the grant takes care of her research for the next few years, Professor Grice is thinking ahead to what happens to the centre she founded when she retires.

“I would like, when I get there, which is quite a long time away yet, that there’s a bit of a succession plan and things can continue,” she said.