Alien Microbes?

Researchers found unique microbes living in hot acid springs, giving insights into how life forms in harsh environments.

09:07 08 July 2016

Researchers have discovered “aliens at Yellowstone”, ArchaeonNanopusillus acidilobi, which is just 100billionths of a metre in size and live at Yellowstone National Park’s hot acid spring. The microbe interacts only with its host, another archaeon – a partnership found nowhere else on Earth. 

 

Mircea Podar of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory Biosciences Division led a team that can now study how the microbes interact with their host, which could lead to new insights into how life forms in harsh environments and can serve as a valuable model to study the evolution and mechanisms of more complex systems.

 

'This work demonstrates how organisms find ways to adapt and interact with specific organisms in a symbiotic or parasitic way to survive in hostile environments,' Podar said. 

 

'By integrating knowledge from genomics, proteomics and classical microbiology, we can culture wild organisms and sometimes manipulate them for practical applications that range from energy production to medicine.'

 

'We discovered and cultured a novel organism from a group of organisms that people have been trying to get for over a decade, and in part that was due to prior genomic data we acquired from those organisms in Yellowstone,' Podar said, adding that the microbial system 'abounds in unique, remarkable physiological and genomic features.'