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Tag: Extremophiles

  • Scientists Shocked to Discover Microbes ‘Colonizing’ Lava Within Hours of Solidifying

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    Microbes have a penchant to survive almost everywhere on Earth and in the most extreme conditions. This includes the desolate, practically sterile environment following volcanic eruptions.

    In a recent Communications Biology paper, a team of ecologists and planetary scientists report the remarkable ability of microbes to repopulate the landscape nearly immediately after a volcanic eruption. So yeah—we’re essentially talking about microorganisms capable of settling down in freshly cooled lava. Importantly, the study represents the first time scientists have documented microbes moving into a completely new habitat that’s still in the process of forming; the lava, as it pours out from the Earth, effectively clears out anything that was there before.

    Such unique dynamics have potent implications for studying how biological communities evolve, not just on Earth but beyond, according to the researchers in a statement.

    A fiery move

    Previous investigations on microbial resilience had mainly focused on microbes that were either already occupying or had successfully infiltrated a certain habitat, according to the paper. On the other hand, primary succession, or the “transition from an uninhabited to an inhabited environment, has rarely been documented in nature,” it added.

    The researchers wondered if volcanic activity could give rise to such unlikely conditions on Earth and headed over to Iceland to monitor the Fagradalsfjall volcano.

    Study co-author Solange Duhamel stands next to a lava flow during investigations into microbial life near volcanoes. Credit: Christopher Hamilton (University of Arizona)

    “The lava coming out of the ground is over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so obviously it is completely sterile,” Nathan Hadland, study lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, said in the statement. “It’s a clean slate that essentially provides a natural laboratory to understand how microbes are colonizing it.”

    Between 2021 and 2023—the study period—the volcano erupted thrice, unleashing intense bursts of gas, dust, and lava that engulfed a wide swath of the tundras nearby. Needless to say, the lava rocks contain little to no water or organic nutrients, meaning that, even if the microbes somehow survived the heat of the lava, they wouldn’t have anything to subsist on. But the researchers’ investigations suggested that didn’t really matter.

    “Badass” colonizers

    For their analysis, the researchers collected lava flows as soon as they were cool enough to gather, in addition to rainwater, aerosols, and rocks from surrounding areas. Then, they extracted DNA from these samples to assess whether and where microbes were present. Finally, they monitored the growth of this new microbe population. “Multiple metrics revealed that the lava flows analyzed in this study rapidly hosted microorganisms within hours and days of solidification,” the researchers noted in the study.

    “The fact that we were able to do this three times—following each eruption in the same area—is what sets our project apart,” Hadland said.

    Indeed, the researchers were able to confirm a first wave of “badass” microbes that survive initial conditions within hours and days of a volcanic eruption. These microbes most likely arrived via rainwater, according to the paper.

    As conditions become less extreme with time, more microbes “move in” to the new community from more rain and adjacent areas, the paper explained. The microbial community did experience some declines in winter but overall maintained stability over three different eruptions.

    “We were not expecting that,” said Solange Duhamel, study co-author and a biologist at the University of Arizona. “These lava flows are among the lowest biomass environments on Earth… But our samples revealed that single-celled organisms are colonizing them pretty quickly.”

    Will Martians be microbial?

    For the researchers, an obvious implication of the new study is whether similar biological processes may be at work on Mars. Although the volcanoes on the neighboring planet appear to have settled, scientists now know that it isn’t impossible for tiny organisms to make a home for themselves inside freshly solidified lava.

    Additionally, volcanic activity injects heat into a planet’s system and releases volatile gases, “so the idea is that past volcanic eruptions could have created transient periods of habitability,” Duhamel added.

    That said, all this stuff about Mars is a big assumption, the researchers admitted. But it’s certainly an impressive demonstration that life on the smallest scales will survive in the grandest of ways.

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    Gayoung Lee

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  • Scientists Stunned as Tiny Algae Keep Moving Inside Arctic Ice

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    Scientists know that microbial life can survive under some extreme conditions—including, hopefully, harsh Martian weather. But new research suggests that one particular microbe, an algal species found in Arctic ice, isn’t as immobile as it was previously believed. They’re surprisingly active, gliding across—and even within—their frigid stomping grounds.

    In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published September 9, researchers explained that ice diatoms—single-celled algae with glassy outer walls—actively dance around in the ice. This feisty activity challenges assumptions that microbes living in extreme environments, or extremophiles, are barely getting by. If anything, these algae evolved to thrive despite the extreme conditions. The remarkable mobility of these microbes also hints at an unexpected role they may play in sustaining Arctic ecology.

    “This is not 1980s-movie cryobiology,” said Manu Prakash, the study’s senior author and a bioengineer at Stanford University, in a statement. “The diatoms are as active as we can imagine until temperatures drop all the way down to -15 C [5 degrees Fahrenheit], which is super surprising.”

    That temperature is the lowest ever for a eukaryotic cell like the diatom, the researchers claim. Surprisingly, diatoms of the same species from a much warmer environment didn’t demonstrate the same skating behavior as the ice diatoms. This implies that the extreme life of Arctic diatoms birthed an “evolutionary advantage,” they added.

    An Arctic exclusive

    For the study, the researchers collected ice cores from 12 stations across the Arctic in 2023. They conducted an initial analysis of the cores using on-ship microscopes, creating a comprehensive image of the tiny society inside the ice.

    To get a clearer image of how and why these diatoms were skating, the team sought to replicate the conditions of the ice core inside the lab. They prepared a Petri dish with thin layers of frozen freshwater and very cold saltwater. The team even donated strands of their hair to mimic the microfluidic channels in Arctic ice, which expels salt from the frozen apparatus.

    As they expected, the diatoms happily glided through the Petri dish, using the hair strands as “highways” during their routines. Further analysis allowed the researchers to track and pinpoint how the microbes accomplished their icy trick.

    The researchers developed and used special microscopes and experimental environments to track how the diatoms move through ice. Credit: Prakash Lab/Stanford University

    “There’s a polymer, kind of like snail mucus, that they secrete that adheres to the surface, like a rope with an anchor,” explained Qing Zhang, study lead author and a postdoctoral student at Stanford, in the same release. “And then they pull on that ‘rope,’ and that gives them the force to move forward.”

    Small body, huge presence

    If we’re talking numbers, algae may be among the most abundant living organisms in the Arctic. To put that into perspective, Arctic waters appear “absolute pitch green” in drone footage purely because of algae, explained Prakash.

    The researchers have yet to identify the significance of the diatoms’ gliding behavior. However, knowing that they’re far more active than we believed could mean that the tiny skaters unknowingly contribute to how resources are cycled in the Arctic.

    “In some sense, it makes you realize this is not just a tiny little thing; this is a significant portion of the food chain and controls what’s happening under ice,” Prakash added.

    That’s a significant departure from what we often think of them as—a major food source for other, bigger creatures. But if true, it would help scientists gather new insights into the hard-to-probe environment of the Arctic, especially as climate change threatens its very existence. The timing of this result shows that, to understand what’s beyond Earth, we first need to protect and safely observe what’s already here.

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    Gayoung Lee

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