Microscopic life includes bacteria, archaea, protists, and diverse communities found in nearly every environment. Investigate microbial structure, metabolism, cooperation, competition, and the unusual adaptations that sustain extremophiles under severe conditions.
The polymerase chain reaction was conceptually possible before scientists used an enzyme from Thermus aquaticus. What this hot-spring bacterium provided was the durability needed to turn PCR from a laborious procedure into a repeatable, automated technology. Its DNA-copying enzyme could survive the...
A brief whole-body radiation dose of about four grays can be fatal to half of exposed people without effective treatment. Laboratory cultures of Deinococcus radiodurans can survive doses measured in thousands of grays. Comparing such different organisms and endpoints is necessarily approximate, but...
Oxygen sustains most large organisms today, but on the early Earth it was a disruptive contaminant. The atmosphere contained almost no free molecular oxygen, and microbial life had evolved in environments where the gas was absent. When ancestors of modern cyanobacteria began releasing oxygen through...
The knobby columns and low domes along the margins of Hamelin Pool look like weathered rocks, yet microbes continue to shape many of them. These structures are stromatolites, layered microbialites produced as communities alter, bind, and mineralize sediment. Their resemblance to forms preserved in...