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What gives a pink lake in Australia the freakishly bright color of chewing gum was pondered before it was even invented. In 1802, Matthew Flinders was the first to suggest that the pink color of Lake Hillier was due to its salinity, but over the next few hundred years, science has shown that this is only part of the story.
With the help of Ken McGrath of Brisbane-based microbial genomics company Microba and a team of researchers, they collected samples and analyzed them using metagenomics. This approach effectively allows scientists to make sense of the microbial environment by isolating individual genomes to identify the entire ecosystem.
