Team members have followed an Angsoid determination process on the elements and molecules that the bacterial strain could develop. They knew that Almedy knew he used oxygen, so they tested another combination in the laboratory. When oxygen was absent, RSW1 could treat hydrogen gas and elementary sulfur – chemicals it would find spit from a volcanic vent and create hydrogen sulfide as a product. However, if the cells were technically alive in this state, they did not develop or have not reproduced. They had a little love of energy – just staying alive, nothing more. “The cell was just sitting there turning its wheels with a real metabolic or biomass gain,” said Boyd.
Then the Agad team is back in the mixture. As expected, bacteria have increased more quickly. But, to the surprise of researchers, RSW1 has also produced hydrogen sulfide, as if it breathes anaerobic. In fact, bacteria seemed to breathe both aerobic and anaerobic both and benefit from the energy of the two processes. This double breathing went further than the previous relationships: the cell did not produce sulfide in the presence of oxygen but also carried out the two contradictory processes at the same time. Bacteria simply should not be able to do it.
“It made us pass this path from” ok, what is really going on here? “” Said Boyd.
Breathe two ways
RSW1 seems to have a hybrid metabolism, performing a mode based on anaerobic sulfur at the same time, it performs aerobic use of oxygen.
“For an organization to fill these two metabolisms is very unique,” said Ranjani MuraliAn environmental microbiologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which was not an involution in research. Normally, when anaerobic organisms are exposed to oxygen, the damaged molecules known as the reactive compounds of oxygen create stress, she said. “Because it does not happen is really interesting.”
At Thermal Spring Roadside West (left) in Yellowstone National Park, the researchers isolated an unusual microbe of the gray color (right).Photography: Eric Boyd; How many magazine
The Boyd team observed that bacteria developed better when managing the two metabolisms simultaneously. This is perhaps an advantage in its unique environment: oxygen is never distributed in hot sources like those where RSW1 lives. In constant changing conditions, where you flow be bathed in oxygen for a moment only for it to disappear, covering its metabolic bets could be a very adaptive line.
Other microbes have been observed breathing in two ways at the same time: anaerobic with nitrate and aerobic with oxygen. But these procedures use entirely different chemicals, and when associated, they tend to present an energy cost for microbes. On the other hand, the hybrid metabolism of the sulfur / oxygen of RSW1 reinforces the cells instead of dragging them.
This type of double stations may have escaped detection so far because it was considered impossible. “You really have no reason to look for” something like that, “said Boyd. In addition, oxygen and sulfide quickly react with each other; Unless you look at the sulfide as a by-product, you could miss it entirely, directed.
It is possible, in fact, that double metabolism microbes are widespread, have declared murals. She highlighted the many habitats and organisms that exist in the tenuous gradients of oxygen and oxygen -free areas. An example is in submerged sediments, which can house wired bacteria. These elongated microbes are oriented in such a way that one of the ends of their body can use the aerobic station in the oxygenated water while the other end is buried deep in anoxic sediments and uses anaerobic breathing. The wired bacteria thrive in their precarious partition by physically separating their aerobic and anaerobic processes. But RSW1 seems to perform several tasks by falling within the spring of Royling.
We still do not know how RSW1 bacteria manage to protect their anaerobic oxygen machinery. Murali said that cells could create chemical supercomplexes in themselves which can surround, isolated and “recover” oxygen, she said-by doing it quickly once they meet it so that there is no chance for gas to interfere with breathing based on sulfur.
RSW1 and any other microbe that has a double metabolism makes intriguing models for the way microbial life can have evolved during the major oxygenation event, said Boyd. “It must have been a fairly chaotic period for microbes on the planet,” he said. As a slow oxygen drop, the intrampheria and the sea of oxygen, any runner in the lifespan shape manages an occasional brush with the new toxic gas – or even its energetic advantage – can be an advantage. During this transition period, two metabolisms can be better than one.
Original story Reprint with the permission of How many magazinean independent editorial publication of Simons Foundation Whose mission is to improve the public participation of science by covering the developments of research and the trends of mathematics and physical sciences and life.
