Meet Dr. Ram Karan, an enzymology research scientist in Saudi Arabia. Karan has been looking for the answer to life’s existence in extreme conditions. The 37-year-old scientist’s quest has now taken his focus to Mars. On September 28, a study in ‘Nature’ confirmed the presence of a subglacial lake on Mars and three others around it. How did they stay liquid though? Salt, it seems, is the answer. The freezing point of salt is much lower, hence it has to be colder to turn into ice. This is where Dr. Ram Karan’s work comes in. He has been studying extremophiles, microorganisms that thrive in extreme conditions. At the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Karan found that Deep Lake Antarctica had similar conditions as the Mars subglacial lake. He was able to extract Extremozymes, despite high salt content that would kill most organisms. The discovery strengthened the possibility of the existence of enzymes on Mars as well.