Slashdot Mirror
Single Microbe May Have Triggered the "Great Dying"
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Medical Daily about a new theory for what triggered the
"Great Dying: " "Researchers believe that they may finally know why the event occurred, but the theory is not without controversy. There are several theories, including the possibility of a meteorite hitting the planet. Previously, most researchers believed that the Permian mass extinction was a result of a series of volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. ... However, Daniel Rothman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is floating around a different theory. As he presented in a meeting for the American Geophysical Union, he believes that the mass extinction could have been caused by something much smaller. His theory is that the extinction was caused by a single strain of bacteria."
On the assumption that why I am typing this 'first' post, someone else is doing the same and will get there before me.
Also, DIE, evil auto-playing video advertisment!
But where's the Earth shattering kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!
The real top of the food chain.
We're just lucky they can't take notice of us.
His theory is that the extinction was caused by a single strain of bacteria. [emphasis added]
Aw, that's not as much fun. The headline made me think that this guy somehow had it narrowed down to one actual organism.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
Under Communism, the Pravda headline would've read: Soviets Invent Mass Extinction First!
Honestly, this is interesting but the article title of, "Single microbe may have triggered the 'Great Dying'" above makes me think of, "Single macrobe triggered the second 'Great Dying' ending all mammalian life on planet Earth."
He remarked in one of his essays that people completely misunderstand evolution, using teleological thinking to believe that we are in some way the "highest form" or "goal" of evolution. But in fact, in terms of biomass and effects on the Earth's ecosystems, we are still living in the Age of Bacteria.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yeah, we produce a lot of methane here too.
I can see how it might kill off some species.
Put a cork in it, people!
...omphaloskepsis often...
By reading the Wikipedia article, I have determined that it also may have been:
- A single rock
- A single volcano
- The build-up of a single type of gas
- The rising of a single body of water
- Lack of a single element in the water
Because as we already know, Mars Needs Women !!
Previously, most researchers believed that the Permian mass extinction was a result of a series of volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia.
...
However, mathanosarcina requires nickel in order to produce methane quickly. Nickel levels spiked almost 251 million years ago, likely because of a spike in Siberian lava from the volcanoes themselves.
In other words, even if the microbes did what they did, that was likely still part of a chain of events triggered by the same volcanos erupting.
Yes. A ridiculous theory. But about as plausible, after all it's just another virus...
Zombie dinosaurs chomped their way through the whole planet, then finally decomposed themselves over time. Only small mammals who could hide underground or birds that could fly away escaped those brain-lovin' undead dinos!
Ask the sharks; they saw the whole thing.
Volcanic eruptions in Siberia = entire planet dusted with nickel.
Eh, geologist comes up with geological theory. Funding running a bit low?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...but very GOOD for getting a grant.
Nowadays you HAVE to incorporate gas-influenced Climate Change into EVERYTHING you produce.Otherwise you risk losing your grant to a malleable researcher.
And the contortions which the IPCC is going through to try to prove that they should keep being funded have resulted in such a huge (assumed) sensitivity to CO2 and CH4 that you can prove almost ANY change using their figures...
Mass extinction in a few thousand years and a single species responsible - I see a parallel. It isn't mass extinction exactly, but mankind has caused quite some disturbance in both land and sea ecosystems already. A few thousand years should be plenty enough to cause real mass extinction.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Which was it?
A comet!
Rothman analyzed a sample of sediment from the end of the Permian era that he obtained in China. From his analysis, he found that the rise in carbon levels was way too sharp to be caused by a geologic event like volcanic eruptions. He argues that instead, a microbe was behind this sudden rise.
Called methanosarcina, this sea-dwelling microbe is responsible for most of the methane produced biologically even today. Rothman and his team discovered that methanosarcina developed the ability to produce methane 231 million years ago. While that ability came around too late to be single-handedly responsible for the link.
Eh?
However, mathanosarcina requires nickel in order to produce methane quickly. Nickel levels spiked almost 251 million years ago, likely because of a spike in Siberian lava from the volcanoes themselves. This indicates that methanosarcina was directly responsible for producing the methane that killed off an overwhelming majority of the Earth's species.
Don't see where he proves the methane did it...
it's how you mass-extinct with it.
http://www.householder.co.th/about-rule-3.html , ,
"And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martiansâ"dead!â"slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth." Admittedly, Wells had a better fleshed out mechanism for his bacteria.
And Michael smith
And thinking about the importance of a phylum in terms of its biomass is nothing to do with whether a biologist is American or not - it tells you the significance of that phylum in food chains. What does the AC above think the krill eat? They eat plankton. Now tell me, which is there more of? Krill or plankton? And what do plankton do? They use sunlight and nutrients (largely recycled by bacteria from decaying matter), or they use bacteria directly.
How does organic matter in the soil get broken down into a form that plants can use? Fungi and bacteria. Without plants, there would be only a few people living on the sea coasts.
Read Jay Gould. Then read some of the many books he recommends. You will then be able to make more intelligent posts on these subjects.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, and drilling is due to resume into the Ellsworth sub-Antartic lake on the 21st?
http://www.ellsworth.org.uk/
I for one welcome our tiny little waterborn underlords.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Much appreciated.
none
He does not have a theory. He has a hypothesis.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Cofactor F430
Forget the organism. This is about the advent of a novel reaction pathway, that scales on the availability of nickel. Surprisingly, geology might have something to say on that score. Any vigorous reaction pathway that bubbles madly away at an oceanic scale is almost certain to colour the infrared signature of our thin gas membrane. Imagine if everyone on the planet had an F430.
There's a lot to like about this hypothesis. I've seen worse. To determine exactly how this pathway becomes prolific at global scale would take decades of further study. It's as yet a humble beginning, of the kind that sometimes pans out.
Setting aside the lack of detail and the characterization of an untested hypothesis as a theory, if you follow the link in TFA about the dissenting opinions you'll find this gem:
Methane explosion
But just what caused that massive methane release remained a mystery. Daniel Rothman, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues wondered whether ocean-dwelling bacteria that churn out methane were the culprits.
His team found through genetic analysis that bacteria called methanosarcina evolved the ability to break down nickel and make methane as part of its metabolism about 251 million years ago. The bacteria may have exploded in population, thereby releasing the ocean's vast methane reserves. And because the bacteria add an oxygen molecule to methane during metabolism, an exponential rise in methanosarcina may have catastrophically depleted ocean oxygen levels.
So now bacteria are performing alchemy (converting Ni to CH4) and "adding an oxygen to methane" no longer produces methanol (CH3OH) or formaldehyde (CH2O), rather it is apparently just "methane with an added oxygen" which is apparently still a potent greenhouse gas.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Sounds a bit like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but involving just one planet.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
And methanosarcina are archaea, not bacteria, a fact that was three clicks away from the Wikipedia entry on methanosarcina, which is apparently too many clicks for Slashdot or Medical Daily (but New Scientist got it right). I suspect that what was actually presented at the meeting was a cogent hypothesis for how methanogens contributed to the Great Dying following an increase in bio-available nickel. What we get is the result after several application of the stupid filter that is the Internet.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
PLEASE - let's not have any more articles from medicaldaily.com until they stop firing off 2 OR MORE auto-playing videos at the same time on every article.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And methanosarcina are archaea, not bacteria, a fact that was three clicks away from the Wikipedia entry on methanosarcina, which is apparently too many clicks for Slashdot or Medical Daily (but New Scientist got it right). I suspect that what was actually presented at the meeting was a cogent hypothesis for how methanogens contributed to the Great Dying following an increase in bio-available nickel. What we get is the result after several application of the stupid filter that is the Internet.
I agree.
Methane deposits are/were more than plentiful under the Arctic ocean, surely it's less of a stretch to imagine destabilisation of undersea methane deposits.
If methanogens evolved to use nickel to produce methane, then wouldn't that indicate that perhaps the time-frame involved would allow for species to adapt in a way that wouldn't reflect the utter destruction in the great dying?
cfm
20 years later, no more dinosaurs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bacteria was picked up off of an unsanitary telephone.
If this is correct it is the second time an organism has wiped out most existing life forms The Great Oxygenation Event is thought to have killed most existing forms of life - then single-celled organisms. It makes you wonder, could it happen again - a bacteria completely changing Earth's chemistry in a way that's incompatible with most existing life forms?
No. No, it doesn't. We have the ability to create a global extinction event at any time. It is absolutely ridiculous to imply that bacteria have more potential drastic effects on the ecosystems on Earth than humans. That we choose not to wield the vast array of means we have to do so, does not equate to the idea that those means do not exist.
Continuing, I was and am very well aware that total biomass can indicate the significance of a species to the ecosystem as a whole (but made an apparently failed attempt at humour). To imply that biomass is particularly important in determining what success in evolution is, is wrong, however.
You intentionally introduced the word phylum, thereby lobbing quite a number of species on the same pile. If one looks at biomass of distinct species, krill and humans are numbers one and two. More importantly, the specializations of different bacteria species means that any individual species is by far not as versatile, resilient, stable, long-living and powerful as humans are. If you disagree, I'd like to hear which specific species we are dwarfed by.
Tenure generally requires making a novel contribution to your field of study, so don't be surprised that young scientists are always making fantastical claims about the way the world might be. This isn't a bad thing - it's how the process works. Good ideas don't come to forefront all by themselves - they all have such humble beginnings. Some claims pan out, some don't. But this is interesting, possible (in terms of chemistry, not necessarily history), and deserves further scrutiny. Perhaps the hypothesis will be shot down. But we shouldn't discourage people from making the effort required to do good science.
Jay Gould is not a supporter of traditional evolution theory. He supports the punctuated equilibrium based upon evidence in the fossil record. The basic idea is that animals do not gradually adapt to an environement. Instead, some mutant freak for some reason becomes dominant in an area. This is often because of a radical change in that environment. Richard Dawkins highly opposes these views: despite the significant evidence Gould produced, it cannot prove that traditional evolution did not occur for the same reason that no one can prove there is no God.
Hm, just looked the guy up, and he's not the eager young whippersnapper I assumed he was. Still, this is how you do science. Good on him.
Single Microbe May Have Triggered the "Great Dying"
It's the strain from Andromeda. Michael had it all figgered out.
But then again, we have no idea..
Options are:
1) METEOR!!! - hit the earth, causing huge cataclysmic weather effects.
2) ICE AGE!!! - cooled everything down to horribly low temperatures in a flash (few hundred or thousands ofyears).
3) GENETIC MUTATION IN BACTERIA!!! - rare killer viruses killed everything accidentally.
4) GENETIC MUTATION IN VEGETATION!!! - plants discovered a new way to be less nutritious and fend off the herding-hordes
Any hypothesis will have to come up with reasons why small dinosaurs, small mammals, and lizards, lots and lots of lizards survived, and not the bigger dinosaurs, that's why I think ice age or mutation in vegetation are the likeliest options.
Perhaps the nickel was present and widely distributed pre-methanosarcina explosion, and they 'ate' it all, so there's little left now.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Good point – but in fact a dictionary does show about half a dozen meanings for "theory", one of which is a synonym for hypothesis.
It's a real problem that many people seem to think that "theory" has only that one meaning, and don't understand that in science it more often means an established body of knowledge generally derived from a number of well-verified hypotheses.
The universe was intelligently designed. Unfortunately God was in a hurry so he coded it in Java.
Thou failest it, brother.
So, when I come to Slashdot in Chrome it automatically puts me in the mobile version of the website. This use to not be a big deal because there was a switch at the bottom that would allow me to go to fullscreen. Now I can't find that switch. Honestly, it is pissing me off.
Captcha: despise
Wow, splitting hairs over synonyms that are used interchangeably in every day speech! Keep it up and one day you'll be a scientist at MIT too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagibacter_ubique
Since when have archaea been bacteria? Why do slashdot writers always seem to use what they think are synonyms "to make the thing more interesting to read" yet not realize that the words don't mean what they think they do.. Microbe =/= bacteria
this is how you're disappointed
this is how you're disappointed
this is how you're disappointed
Not with a...oh, you know the rest.
Actually Agent Smith compared us to a virus, rather than a microbe
It's the smell!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yeah, confined to the ocean and only in temperate surface waters. We can take 'em ;-)
People use words incorrectly, and then their incorrect usage gets documented in the dictionary as a correct usage, and the word becomes less useful by virtue of ambiguity.
Many words in English can serve as their own antonyms because of this. Like "belie" which can mean "to lie" or "to reveal as a lie." Or "Cleave" which can mean "to separate" or "to adhere". Or "poignant" which can mean "emotionally painful" or "delightful."
"Irony" was useful when it exclusively meant "outcome is exact opposite of what was expected/intended." But now, because so many people misunderstood the word, all our dictionaries include "any odd or coincidental circumstance" as a valid meaning.
We do not do ourselves any favors by allowing the stupidest among us to define our words for us. All it does is make our language less useful, requiring us to use even more words when we want to say anything at all.
The press release failed to mention that collaborators in the study, Greg Fournier and Eric Alm, initially identified Methanosarcina as the probable organism responsible, since ONLY it has the particular pathway for making methane that evolved recently by horizontal gene transfer, which is a highly unusual genetic event. Fournier discovered the gene transfer evolving the pathway in 2008 (http://jb.asm.org/content/190/3/1124.full), and at that time predicted it would have had major biogeochemical consequences for the planetary biosphere. Later, as part of this work he showed that, contrary to the misquote in the article, the best estimate for the evolution of Methanosarcina containing the new pathway is 251 million years ago (the exact time of the extinction), not 231 as reported. This is why the authors think that nickel would therefore be important, since it is critical for the growth of all methanogens, including this particular subset, which would have a massive advantage once that global limiting factor was removed. They presented their work this summer at the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting. So there is a lot of evidence that this specific organism and metabolic process is responsible, and that the timing of its evolution is far more than just conjecture to match the exciting geochemical data.
It coulda been worse.
Its locked in water-ice deposits called methane hydrates. Its mainly an annoyance to oil companies because these appear as fake oil deposits in seismic records. Hydrates also lock up high pressure gas which is dangerous to drilling if you do not properly anticipate them. Otherwise these natural gas deposits are far more expensive to produce than land shale-gas. So they are not on the economic radar yet and may be the fossil fuel of the 22nd century.
These are also mentioned a potential problem for climate change. As the world warms these could melt and release methane into the atmosphere. Methane is twenty times stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide per weight of gas. So some scientist suggest a runaway disaster of more heat releasing more methane causing more heat, etc. This has postulated the cause of a previous mass extinction in the geologic record.
Ugh. The double auto-play videos at that site should disqualify it for propagation in any Slashdot stories.
Here is the Mona Loa methane graph. Scientists dont understand why yet. First, sunlight destroys it in around 20 years. CO2 takes much longer to come out of the atmosphere. Second, geochemists may not understand all the methane sinks yet, e.g. the ocean.
I see no reason why both theories couldn't be correct, just under different circumstances. The traditional theory where some mutations are benign or helpful, spurring reproduction, and the far more numerous mutations which will kill the organism or make it hard for it to reproduce.
Then an asteroid hits or the earth rapidly warms/cools or some other catastrophe, most species die but a few species that may well have been on the brink of extinction finds its new environment friendly and thrives, while mutations that might have been benign in the old ecology are now a hindrance, and some traits that were hindrances before (e.g., the organism's size or lack of same) are now helpful to it.
It seems that both would fit at different times, and there may well be other types of evolution that are similarly possible that no one has yet hypothesizd about.
Free Martian Whores!
Did this make news because the kid goes to MIT? The stoners at Mankato State can write way better hypotheses.
In The Nitrogen Fix a bacteria that fixed nitrogen using gold has removed almost all the oxygen from our atmosphere.
Of course it could happen. You said it yourself it has happened before. What kind of silly question is that?
Evidence of one sort doesn't dispel all other evidences. All of these things happened each with a contributing part.
It makes you wonder, could it happen again - a bacteria completely changing Earth's chemistry in a way that's incompatible with most existing life forms?
Maybe it's not a strain of bacteria. Maybe it's us.
Anyway, whatever happens, I'm quite sure the Tardigrades will survive it.
Wow, splitting hairs over synonyms that are used interchangeably in every day speech! Keep it up and one day you'll be a scientist at MIT too!
I was. And we knew the difference.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
There are no other categories. All attempts to define god in a meaningful, non-contradictory fashion have been shown fallacious.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Great theory - for back in 2008 when it was presented at an ASM conference by Fournier and Alm. Looks like he stapled his ideas on top and neglected to include the gene-transfer that gets you to this point. Without that, it seems more circumstantial than defining (and lacking some of the science part), but taken as a whole picture, it's certainly exciting.
Of course it could happen. You said it yourself it has happened before. What kind of silly question is that?
It's called a rhetorical question. It's a popular linguistic technique in some circles. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.