Hurricane-Riding Microbes Make a Home at Cruising Altitude
January 29th, 2013 |
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Sample a hurricane’s air from a plane high in the stratosphere and, in addition to the expected water and grit, you’ll find an abundance of microbes. Swept up from land and sea by the tropical cyclone’s power, the skyborne bacteria persist in the atmosphere for days—and some may even thrive there. A new survey of [...]
Keep reading »Millennia-Old Microbes Found Alive in Deep-Ocean Muck
May 18th, 2012 |
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A sparse community of microbes can persist for eons in the clay beneath the deep blue sea. When scientists drilled into the Pacific Ocean bottom and pulled up a long core of clay, they also pulled up microbes living on so little that it was hard for the scientists to tell if they were alive [...]
Keep reading »Can fermenting microbes save us from climate change?
June 29th, 2010 |
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Just as bacteria and fungi are methodically breaking down the millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, microbes might help us with another uncontrolled emission due to human activity—carbon dioxide. An anaerobic bacteria by the name of Clostridium ljungdahlii can ferment everything from sugars to simple mixtures of carbon dioxide and [...]
Keep reading »Frozen Antarctic lakes yield new viruses
November 5th, 2009 |
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In the chilly depths of one of Antarctica’s freshwater lakes, a surprising number of novel viruses thrive. Researchers braved frigid temperatures to collect water samples from Lake Limnopolar, located on Livingston Island near the Antarctic Peninsula, and sequenced the genomes of the collected species. The new genetic study reveals some 10,000 species of viruses from [...]
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