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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Food and energy availability cause physical changes in acid-loving microorganisms that are used to study Earth's climate history, according to research from Dartmouth College.

The finding that factors other than temperature can influence the membranes of single-celled archaea adds to the complexity of paleoclimate studies which have traditionally used the microbe's fossilized remains to reconstruct past climate conditions.

Archaea are one of three major domains of life alongside bacteria and eukarya, the domain that includes animals and plants.

The research result, published in Environmental Microbiology, can help resolve disagreements in paleoclimate research and can support a more detailed understanding of the planet's climate systems.

"Biomarkers, like the fat molecules that make up the cell membranes in our own bodies, can be powerful recorders of the environment that can last for billions of years," said William Leavitt, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth. "The motivation of this research was to better explain how archaea respond to all major types of stress in their environment, and how they record that stress in fat molecules that last over geologic time."

[...] While most research on archaeal membranes has focused on species that live in lakes and oceans, the Dartmouth researchers studied thermoacidophiles—acid and heat-loving relatives that originally evolved in hot springs and thrive in some of Earth's most extreme environments. Instead of studying how the microbe reacted to temperature changes, the research team focused on the effects of varying food and energy availability.

[...] The research aims to help geologists and climatologists in their efforts to fine-tune records of past sea surface temperatures as they piece together portraits of Earth's past climate.

More information: Alice Zhou et al, Energy flux controls tetraether lipid cyclization in Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, Environmental Microbiology (2019). DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.14851

Journal information: Environmental Microbiology

Original Submission