Margaret Ann Hinkle, assistant professor of earth and environmental geosciences at the University of Washington and Lee, recently said, “Effect of sulfonic acid on fungal manganese oxide production”
Hinkle’s article appeared in the January issue. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Actaa journal that publishes research papers on a wide range of subjects in geogeochemistry, meteorites, and planetary geochemistry.
“It’s really nice to see the articles published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta,” said Hinkle. “It represents the culmination of years of experimentation, data gathering, reflection and writing.”
The study featured in the Hinkle article Renfest Grant Program with the support of Summer Research Scholars ProgramJavier Peralta ’21 co-authored this article with Jeffrey Post of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Carla Santelli, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Peralta is currently a graduate student studying geophysics at Stanford University.
“Javier was one of the first group of students to join my lab after I started working here at W&L,” says Hinkle. “He is one of the most intelligent, kind and thoughtful people I have ever met. It is an incredible feeling that the research he did in his first summer was included in our paper and is now published.
The focus of this article is on the biomineralization of sulfonic acids, an environmentally important class of sulfur-containing acidic compounds, and manganese, an essential micronutrient and one of the most abundant elements in the earth’s crust. It’s an impact study. Buffers were used to control the pH of the experiment, and the researchers found that all buffers altered manganese biomineralization to some extent, with sulfonic acid having a substantial effect on the process. Since the biogeochemical cycles of manganese and sulfur are closely related, understanding how these two important pools of sulfur and manganese interact with each other will be important for understanding these cycles and potential to better understand their interactions.
Hinkle has been a member of the W&L Faculty since 2017, teaching in the Department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences and an Associate Faculty member in the Environmental Studies programme. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Sewanee, South University, and a master’s and doctoral degree in both earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis.
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