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A microscopic view of cyanobacteria, fuchsia color, growing on a fragment of rock.
Credit: PNAS
Life on Earth has just become stranger, and it can have intriguing implications for life beyond this planet.
This is an example of new research that has identified cyanobacteria – a class of microbes known to transform the sun into sugar – and living far from the surface of the Earth, far from any sunbeam.
Because they are so small, cyanobacteria do not always get a lot of love, but they are the ones who turned Earth from an inhospitable rock (for us, anyway) into a world. Green growing and putting the oxygen we depend on in the atmosphere first. . "What cyanobacteria have invented has been brilliantly important throughout the history of life on Earth," said Lynn Rothschild, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, not involved in the new research, said. told Space.com. [Photos: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life]
"They have managed to turn our Earth into a livable place for animals that have evolved here," said Rothschild. She called the cyanobacteria "one-stop shop" for turning what was easily accessible about 2.7 billion years ago, at the beginning of the Earth – compounds such as water and dioxide carbon – in oxygen and sugar that animals need to survive. Some cyanobacteria can even transform the nitrogen that makes up most of our atmosphere into biologically useful ammonia.
It all depends on the bacteria that receive enough sunlight for photosynthesis, a reaction that allows cyanobacteria, plants, and similar organisms to feed. Thus, deep within the Earth's surface, it is unlikely that cyanobacteria will hide. But this is what the authors of the new research say they have discovered: cyanobacteria living within 600 meters of the surface of a region called the Iberian belt of pyrite located in southwestern Spain.
If the new research holds up, it suggests that some cyanobacteria have been unable to collect enough sunlight to carry out photosynthesis. They then threw away the sponge and found a way to feed themselves on hydrogen. (Hydrogen also feeds microbes found at the bottom of the ocean, near deep hydrothermal vents, also studied as potential alien pathways.)
This great transition from photosynthesis to chemical subsistence is intriguing, because if Mars is not the kind of life we know, it could flourish, it was many, many years ago. So, if cyanobacteria on Earth sneak under the surface and find a new way to make a living, does that increase the likelihood that something similar will happen with hypothetical cyanobacteria-like organisms on Mars?
It's an exciting proposition, Rothschild said. "The idea of surface organisms going underneath [the ground] It's something that many of us talk about all the time, "Rothschild said, but usually not in the context of cyanobacteria, thought to be too dependent on sunlight." It provides a fine example of an experimental case of organisms appeared on the surface, and then were able to adapt to the deep life of the biosphere. "
This is not the first time that cyanobacteria have been spotted doing something unexpected, told Space.com Daniela Billi, an astrobiologist at the University of Rome, not involved in this new research. This year alone, another team of scientists discovered that some cyanobacteria can photosynthesize using only infrared light, which exceeds the visible spectrum. The new research goes even further, Billi said.
"It's a new metabolism that's really very difficult," she said, as well as an unexpected way to survive. "It shows that there are ways we did not think." [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]
The new research, published yesterday (Oct. 1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights one of the strongest choruses of research in astrobiology: this life is strange, rustic and ubiquitous.
"Whenever we observe strange and extreme environments on Earth, life always surprises us – we always find a form of life that we do not think or think we can not be there," said Billi. "We are very far from knowing life and its extremes."
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+ Original article on Space.com.
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