Slashdot Mirror
UV-Resistant Micro-Organisms Discovered In the Stratosphere
junglee_iitk writes "Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on earth and highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by some Indian scientists. These bacteria, which do not match any species on earth, were found in samples collected through a balloon sent up to the stratosphere in April 2005. The payload consisted of a cryosampler containing 16 evacuated and sterilised stainless steel probes. Throughout the flight, the probes remained immersed in the liquid neon to create a 'cryopump effect.' These cylinders after collecting air samples from different heights ranging from 20 to 41 km were parachuted down and safely retrieved, it said." Here's the Indian Space Research Organisation's press release on the discovery. Adds an anonymous reader: "This paper in International Journal of Astrobiology [PDF] speculates how microorganisms reach the stratosphere."
They are less likely to be able to survive those things. Evolution is a set of trade-offs. Being resistant to UV light doesn't buy you heat resistance, or antibiotic resistance. Get good at something, get worse at something else. In fact, I would think that these bacteria are cryophiles and wouldn't grow at body temperature.
If a bacteria that is resistant to heat or antibiotics was in a high UV environment, there is nothing that requires, or even suggests, that it would lose its previous resistance as part of gaining a UV resistance. I'm not even sure where you'd get that idea?
I didn't get that idea. If course it's possible to be multi-resistant, but this has to come from not doing something else. The biochemical energy put into repairing DNA or heat-stable polymerases could have been put into reproduction, for example.
The idea I am countering in this thread is the idea that this is some sort of super-bacteria that will devour us all. Finding something new thriving in an extreme environment is a lot less scary than finding something new thriving in a environment close to our own body conditions.