On Jun. 20, 1964, a team of researchers led by Dr. Thomas Brock, then a professor at the University of Indiana, collected a sample of boiling water from hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. This sample would have profound implications for the field of astrobiology, as well as disciplines like genetics, molecular biology, and medicine.

In 1969, they published a seminal paper describing the thermophilic bacterium, Thermus aquaticus (1). T. aquaticus thrived in the boiling waters of Yellowstone, and the mechanisms it used to survive became the focus of scientific inquiry.