About the Authors

Jimmy H. W. Saw

Current address: Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America

Michael Schatz

Affiliation Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America

Mark V. Brown

Affiliations NASA Astrobiology Institute, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America, School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Dennis D. Kunkel

Affiliation Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc., Kailua, Hawai'i, United States of America

Jamie S. Foster

Affiliation Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, University of Florida Space Life Science Laboratory, Kennedy Space Center, Kennedy, Florida, United States of America

Harry Shick

Affiliation Kea'au, Hawai'i, United States of America

Stephanie Christensen

Affiliation Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'I, United States of America

Shaobin Hou

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America, Advanced Studies of Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America

Xuehua Wan

Affiliations Department of Microbiology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America, Advanced Studies of Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America

Stuart P. Donachie

donachie@hawaii.edu

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dennis Kunkel is the owner of Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JS SD. Performed the experiments: JS MB DK JF HS SC SH XW SD. Analyzed the data: JS MS SC SD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DK. Wrote the paper: JS SD. Conducted fieldwork: JS HS MB JF SD.