Microbe Survivor
By Wendy Heller, February 7, 2009 @ 02:00 AM (EST)
Source: Physorg.com
The Pompeii worm, the most heat-tolerant animal on Earth, lives in the deep ocean at super-heated hydrothermal vents. Covering this deep-sea worm's back is a fleece of bacteria. These microbes contain all the genes necessary for life in extreme environments.
The discovery of reverse gyrase in Nautilia profundicola suggests that it plays a key role in this microbe's ability to thrive near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where conditions are thought to resemble those found on early Earth," said Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research. "Knowledge of microbes living near vents may aid our understanding of how life evolved."...
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