The evolution of the earliest microbes on Earth is the basis of research conducted by Assistant Professor of Biology Lorraine Olendzenski. She has supervised several student research projects, and says that students in her state-of-the-art labs in Johnson Hall of Science "use a variety of culture, microscopy, genetic and bioinformatics techniques and tools to help answer questions about microbial evolution."

Her current research includes study of the microbes associated with "desert varnish," a thin coating of manganese and iron oxides that forms on the surfaces of rocks in arid regions. With other researchers, Olendzenski says, "we are exploring which organisms are present on and in varnish using a molecular-based approach of sequencing certain microbes. We have found a number of sequences from ascomycete fungi on these rocks, as well as those from cyanobacteria. Emily Gotta ’06 isolated, cloned and sequenced the DNA we use in this project," she points out in reference to St. Lawrence’s commitment to faculty-student collaboration.

A graduate of Boston University, with a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Olendzenski has been on the faculty at St. Lawrence since 2004.  She is co-editor of the research volume Horizontal Gene Transfer: Genomes in Flux, published by Humana Press.