Slashdot Mirror
Iron-eating Bug Found to Thrive in 121C Heat
shobadobs writes "A story in the Independent reports that a microorganism appropriately referred to as 'Strain 121' has been found capable of thriving, with its colony size doubling, at a heat of 121 degrees Celsius, eight degrees more than the previously recorded maximum temperature that an organism can survive. This deep-sea volcanic vent creature was found on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and it feeds off of iron." Luckily it's only a microorganism. At first glance I thought scientists might have discovered a real-life rust monster.
I, for one, welcome our new iron-eating overlords.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> Luckily it's only a microorganism.
Hmm, aren't microorganisms eating iron and surviving in ovens are harder to extinct than some cm long creatures with hands and feet?
I would guess that the only place these bugs could exist would be where the pressure is high enough to keep water liquid at a temperature that is 20 degrees C above boiling (at sea level)... Is the temperature a prerequisite for their metabolic processes?
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
I read about this in the paper on the way to work. And the article ended, yet again, saying "this is encouraging for people who still hope to find life on Mars". I understand that extremophile microbes demonstrate that our conception of a life-supporting environment has heretofore been a little narrow, but recent discoveries keep turning up organisms that live in hot, high-pressure envirtonments, kind of the exact opposite of the conditions on Mars. So how does this help the Martian life lobby? Given these recent findings, wouldn't we be better off looking for monocellular life somewhere like Venus, say?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Hah! How those fools laughed when I made my aluminium hat and bacofoil suit to block out the CIA's space-rays. Yet I alone will be safe from the iron eating scourge while those naysayers struggle to hold their trousers up as their belts are eaten away by the iron-devouring scourge.
Since this is, I presume, a water-based organism, it can only survive such high temperatures deep down in the ocean. At sealevel, the water inside the organism will boil and make the thing explode. Also I wonder how it can keep it's aminoacids and DNA intact. At 120 degrees C there is enough energy to break the Hydrogen bonds which give the proteines and DNA it's stability...
Could somebody give me some indications on the pressures sown there?
This would be really great material for a new episode. Of course it would have to include the line "Bite my shiny iron-eating-bug-infested metal ass!". :o)
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Colonies doubling in size at 121C.
Now that's what I call hot sex.
That would be 121 Celsius there Mensa...as opposed to the 130 fahrenheit that your runner bug survives at, which is only 54.4C
Hi, Iron eating bugs/bacteria aren't exactly new. They can be found eating away the wreck of the Titanic for instance (where 20% of the ship's steel has been consumed)
My web domain.
"Iron-eating bug found to thrive in 121C heat
By Steve Connor Science Editor"
I see that the son of Sarah is still researching ways to stop those pesky Terminators.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If this little blighter is thriving at 121C, how high can it actually survive. The article mentions that temperatures in this guy's home top out at about 400C. How much heat can these guys actually take before cooking?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
From this article... The waterbear can revert to an "instant coffee"-dry state which resists storage in liquid nitrogen, contact with mineral acids, organic solvents, radioactive radiation and boiling water. After this kind of brute "scientific" scrutiny the miraculous creature is still able to return to normal life--it needs only a small droplet of water!
CowsAnonymous: We're here to help moo.
The original news release, with mpeg videos, is available from the National Science Foundation website. Enjoy.
Yakov's greatest joke (or was it only great joke) was a take-off on the "American Express: Don't home without it" slogan that was used during the 80s:
"Soviet Express: Don't leave home."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The discovery of new extremophiles is very important to biotech.
A discussion of the various discoveries from extremophiles is here. I'm going to focus on one process, made possible by genes from hyperthermophiles from deep ocean vents. One process, PCR (Polymer Chain Reaction), the technology that allows us to create large batches of identical DNA, depends upon polymerase taken from these organisms.
The reason is this: in order to for PCR to work, a solution of polymerase and the desired DNA sequence is heated so that the DNA will quickly uncoil, allowing the polymerase to go to work - copying each strand of DNA present, doubling the amount of DNA. The solution is cooled, and then the process repeats, doubling the amount of DNA each time. Unfortunately, "normal" polymerase quickly breaks down at the best temperatures for this process.
Extremophile polymerase changes all of this, since it's perfectly happy to operate at these high temperatures.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Iron-eating Bug Found to Thrive in 121C Heat
That's not a bug, that's a feature
I think the actual infection would be your smallest problem when swimming in 120 degrees water at several hundred atm pressure.
Ferrous Calciferous Lithium or (FeCaL(i)) Matter is what is produced.
Whew! It's only a microorganism . . . they're only responsible for more deaths than everything else on the planet combined.
Remember . . . it's usually the little stuff that gets you.
-B
Citing a need to find out what other organisms 'enjoy hot ovens', researchers will be continuing their work, this time with kittens.
-T
Just wait till someone finds a living creature that can withstand several hundred degrees ..... it'd have a real chance of surviving a fire ..... now that would be scary.
Prions -- the deformed proteins responsible for Mad Cow, CJD, and related spongiform encephalopathies -- can survive autoclaving (steam at high pressure).
Autoclaved surgical instruments (e.g. eye-surgery scalpels) have been found to transmit CJD between patients. This means that the tiniest trace of protein on a knife blade isn't denatured.
-kgj
In America you can always find a party, in Soviet Russia party can always find you
an extremely witty joke by almost everyone's standards, making a great pun with the word "party" to create truly a beautiful and lasting joke.
The classic joke was later reused in the cartoon Family Guy as the Yakoff Smirnoff setting of the autodrive system. The voice made comments like "you are coming to a fork in road, in soviet russia, road fork you!" and "in soviet russia, car drive you" to succesfully create riotous amusement by the shear lameness of the repitition.
Unfortunantly lameness and repititon are also the chosen methods of expression on another media: the internet. This continuation of the running joke has made the memory of that great joke lost in a sea of "in soviet russia, opteron makes beowolf cluster out of you!" travesties.
But it seems in this corrupt world, anything innocent and beautiful will eventally be raped by those who have nothing to do but distroy purity.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Or maybe this happened once before, and the current universe is the product of Strain 121 excrement.
Man, that's a really weird thought. Must be Friday.
--- Ban humanity.