The Chilean National Commission for Scientific Research and Technology (CONICYT) recently sponsored a photography contest, and our own Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos has won first place! The photo (above) was taken inside a cave of the Coastal Range of the Atacama. Here, Dr. Azua-Bustos and colleagues found a very primitive microalgae of the Cyanidium genus, which was able to photosynthesize with extremely low levels of light. This finding is of astrobiological interest because if photosynthetic life exists on Mars, then it […]