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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 06/15/2009 : 14:53:53
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Link
LiveScience.com jeanna Bryner
senior Writer
livescience.com – Mon Jun 15, 11:46 am ET
After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.
The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.
"We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure."
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I don't know if this critter would resemble extraterrestrial life or not, but it certainly presents some possibilities.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
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Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Landrew
New Member
44 Posts |
Posted - 06/28/2009 : 21:40:17 [Permalink]
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I seem to remember there were some bacteria living inside a nuclear reactor, where it received many orders of magnitude more radiation than would kill nearly every other known form of life. When analyzed, this bacteria was employing a very specialized self-repairing system which was able to repair the damage to it's genetic material faster than it was being damaged. It's hard to imagine how such an adaptation could occur on earth, and in which conditions. It is easier to imagine that it could have evolved in an environment outside the earth where lethal doses of radiation would occur without the protection of an ozone layer or a magnetic field.
http://biospace.nw.ru/astrobiology/Articles2002/Astrobio_pavlov_25-34.pdf |
God bless women, for without them there would be no cookies. |
| Edited by - Landrew on 06/28/2009 21:52:34 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 06/29/2009 : 09:31:59 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Landrew
It's hard to imagine how such an adaptation could occur on earth, and in which conditions. |
Actually, it's not...
There are natural fission reactors where they could have evolved during a long period.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
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Landrew
New Member
44 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2009 : 21:50:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Originally posted by Landrew
It's hard to imagine how such an adaptation could occur on earth, and in which conditions. |
Actually, it's not...
There are natural fission reactors where they could have evolved during a long period.
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Plausible, however such environments were localized and fairly short-lived in relative terms. They also seem to have been buried fairly deep in the earth. Some bacteria exist at extreme depths in the earth, but whether they evolved there or are merely left there from previous times isn't too clear. |
God bless women, for without them there would be no cookies. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2009 : 07:40:35 [Permalink]
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They might have very well evolved [i]inside[/b] the reactors.
Starting in relatively safer areas and slowly gaining new genes and crawling their way deeper inside.
Some reactors were build in the 60ies or 70ies. 40 years is plenty of time for Prokaryotic evolution. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2009 : 09:21:36 [Permalink]
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It didn't take 40 years for the Nylon-eating bacteria to evolve its nylon-digesting enzyme.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Landrew
New Member
44 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2009 : 16:54:19 [Permalink]
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| True enough, microbes are the most rapidly evolving life forms of all. |
God bless women, for without them there would be no cookies. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2009 : 18:43:25 [Permalink]
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| Virus actually if you consider them alive. But prokaryotes are next. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Landrew
New Member
44 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2009 : 10:39:51 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
Virus actually if you consider them alive. But prokaryotes are next.
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I don't consider a virus to be alive, because it has no metabolism. It does however reproduce, so it's a matter of definitions.
To me, a virus is like a flash drive, plugged into a computer, where the computer virus can hijack the machinery of the computer to create millions of copies of itself, to be dispersed far and wide to reproduce again. |
God bless women, for without them there would be no cookies. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2009 : 19:56:34 [Permalink]
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A virus is a pretty amazing thing. Little more than a small piece of DNA or RNA set up to reproduce itself by hijacking the metabolism and cellular mechanisms of living things.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2009 : 20:37:43 [Permalink]
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| Transposons and plasmids are even crazier in that respect... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2009 : 23:48:17 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
Transposons and plasmids are even crazier in that respect...
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Plasmids are interesting, and a little scary when it comes to lateral gene transfer and bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Transposons... the fact that your genome can rearrange itself is a little disconcerting, but still interesting.
I have to go with the virus as the most interesting of these three though. No real reason, I just find them fascinating.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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| Edited by - Dude on 07/04/2009 23:49:08 |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/05/2009 : 09:29:00 [Permalink]
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Transposons are purely genomic parasites.
They are genes whose only function is to get more copy of themselves inserted into their how genomes...
Plasmids could be seen as the same. In their own basic form, they are transposons self-contained on their own micro-chromosomes.
Then most plasmids also have genes that allow their transport to other cells. Either by coding for their own transport system or by aping the regulator from other plasmids that carry such genes, hence rendering essentially, infectious transposons.
Now, some plasmids have yet another trick which is to also carry genes useful for their host bacterium, therefore not rendering them symbiotes more than parasites. In fact, some plasmids have co-evolved so deeply with their host that the genes they carry are vital for the bacterium.
Viruses now are not so different from plasmids which would carry a whole other set of genes to make them infectious in a totally different way.
Hell, quite a few bacterial viruses (all lysogenic bacteriophage) even do like the plasmids and transport genes that will help the bacterium.
What is so fascinating is how it blurs the line between a pathogen and a symbiont, between entities that are their own "species" or part of another species' genome...
It's really a mind-blowing freaking cool world we live in... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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A new extremophile…
