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Bacteria that "Eat" Only Air Found in Cold Deserts Around the World

posted by martyb on Thursday August 20 2020, @02:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the micro-Breatharians dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Bacteria that "eat" only air found in cold deserts around the world:

In 2017, the UNSW researchers discovered bacteria in Antarctica that gained their energy from a new source – the air itself. In low-nutrient soil, these bugs instead pull hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide out of the air around them, allowing them to thrive in environments where there's very little other life. This phenomenon is known as atmospheric chemosynthesis.

And now in a follow-up study, the team has found that this ability may not be limited to Antarctica. The researchers found that the two genes previously linked to atmospheric chemosynthesis are abundant in soil in two other similar environments – the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau.

The researchers collected 122 soil samples from 14 sites in these three regions, then extracted and sequenced DNA from them. They found that the two genes of interest were present in all 122 samples, in different amounts depending on the level of nutrients each location had to offer.

The bacteria serve as a potential model for the form life could take on alien worlds.

Journal Reference:
Angelique E. Ray, Eden Zhang, Aleks Terauds, Mukan Ji, Weidong Kong, Belinda C. Ferrari, Soil Microbiomes With the Genetic Capacity for Atmospheric Chemosynthesis Are Widespread Across the Poles and Are Associated With Moisture, Carbon, and Nitrogen Limitation, Microbiol., 12 August 2020, doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01936

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @04:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @04:46PM (#1039426)

    The energy comes from converting H2 to H20. It is not clear to me where the atmospheric H2 comes from; I guess it is H20 split by cosmic rays or sunlight?

    That's not really the topic of the paper or article so you'll probably have to look elsewhere to find insight into the atmospheric composition.

    Earth's atmosphere certainly contains trace amounts of H2, at a concentration of about 1 part per million.

    Since it seems unlikely that elemental hydrogen could stick around for very long in the atmosphere, there must be natural processes which are continuously introducing small amounts of hydrogen gas to the atmosphere (dissociation of water seems plausible).