UV-Resistant Micro-Organisms Discovered In the Stratosphere 156
junglee_iitk writes "Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on earth and highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by some Indian scientists. These bacteria, which do not match any species on earth, were found in samples collected through a balloon sent up to the stratosphere in April 2005. The payload consisted of a cryosampler containing 16 evacuated and sterilised stainless steel probes. Throughout the flight, the probes remained immersed in the liquid neon to create a 'cryopump effect.' These cylinders after collecting air samples from different heights ranging from 20 to 41 km were parachuted down and safely retrieved, it said." Here's the Indian Space Research Organisation's press release on the discovery. Adds an anonymous reader: "This paper in International Journal of Astrobiology [PDF] speculates how microorganisms reach the stratosphere."
Re:I hope they washed their hands after (Score:3, Informative)
This is completely wrong. They're resistant to UV because the upper atmosphere is constantly bombarded by UV rays. Clorox and UV rays' methods of cell destruction are completely different. In fact, they are probably less resistant to bleach/antibiotics etc than bacteria down here because they've never been exposed to it.
UV resistance and mitochondria (Score:4, Informative)
Many of these same chemical pathways were co-opted in aerobic cells. Free oxygen is toxic to many cells and parts of cells. Yet they figured out how to incorporate the toxic mitochondria energy engines. Mitochondria help cells generate an order of magnitude more energy than aerobic cells, setting the stage for later mobile animal life which requires lots of energy.
Re:Aliens (Score:3, Informative)
Red Dwarf
It isn't obscure it was on PBS and the BBC... Oh never-mind.
Re:Swell... (Score:3, Informative)
While you may be correct in this case, being good at one thing doesn't mean being bad at another... not having been exposed to something does.
If a bacteria that is resistant to heat or antibiotics was in a high UV environment, there is nothing that requires, or even suggests, that it would lose its previous resistance as part of gaining a UV resistance. I'm not even sure where you'd get that idea?
Now, its likely if this bacteria has evolved at that high altitude or came to be there through some sort of exogenesis that it hasn't been *exposed* to high temperatures or antibiotic chemicals but its lack of resistance to them has nothing to do with its UV resistance.
Re:It's ten o'clock, here's stoopid. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How far away is the stratosphere? (Score:5, Informative)
In physical space, not far. A mere 10km.
In parameter space (e.g. factors needed to support life sustainably), pretty far. By comparison, the distinction between the stratosphere and the north pole as an ecological niche is considerably greater than that between the north pole and an equatorial rain forest. Keeping in mind that the distance from the equator and the pole is 10,000km, one might say for poetic purposes (you claim to be an English major after all) that the distance between the surface of the Earth and the stratosphere in their capacities to support life is, at a minimum, over at thousand times greater than their physical separation.
they would be outcompeted (Score:3, Informative)
resistance to uv light is expensive. meaning the cell has to expend all of this additional energy just surviving in high uv. remove the uv, and now uv resistance is a handicap. non-uv resistant bacteria can grow faster and reproduce faster because they aren't wasting their energy. uv resistance bacteria, on the surface of the earth, would simply be outcompeted at any food source, and die off
we see that with antibiotic resistance too. currently farmers pump livestock with antibiotics (it makes for bigger chickens, pigs, etc.) such that all of the microorganisms in the area of these farms become resistant to antibiotics
but this doesn't mean antibiotic bacteria will storm the planet. simply because antibiotic resistance is expensive. so if you remove antibiotics from these farms, bacteria from outside the farm, that aren't wasting their energy resisting antibiotics that aren't there anymore, simply grow faster and outcompete the resistant bacteria, and antibiotic resistant bacteria die off
its still dangerous though to use antibiotics in livestock, because antibiotic resistance normally would be something that bacteria would have to spend a lot of time and generations to evolve. but if you are actively breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria at various sites all over your country, you are seeding the environment with bacteria ready at a moments notice to jump in and take over from nonresistant bacteria. so someone using antibiotics is at sudden risk of reinfection by resistant bacteria, rather than only at risk of reinfection over many years time of antibiotic use, spent breeding resistance in their own bodies. which doesn't really happen, since normal antibiotic use implies a few weeks use
so antibiotic use meant for a few weeks time here and there will not breed armies of antibiotic resistant bacteria. but prolonged, extended use of antibiotics, for whatever reason, will seed the environment with resistant bacteria ready to render your antibiotic use completely ineffective
so we need to stop using antibiotics in livestock. but of course this meets resistance from the agriculture lobby, because now you are getting smaller chickens and pigs for the same cost of raising them
Re:Swell... (Score:4, Informative)
The biochemical energy put into repairing DNA or heat-stable polymerases could have been put into reproduction, for example.
So they'll eat us at a slower rate than they would if they didn't have to have multiple resistance :-P
Just kidding, sorta. As I understand it, those plasmids conferring multiple antibiotic resistance are pretty small compared to bacterial chromesomes, are replicated extremely efficiently, and don't really slow the bugs down to where that wouldn't be a problem. When I make ampycillin resistant E.Coli and grow them in amycillin , they don't seem to go much slower than nonresistant bugs on non-selective media. Granted, I'm not timing them or looking very closely, but I really can't tell a difference. And how much would the extra time for reproduction really help you if it's growing in you? Even if it doubles it's reproduction time, we're still talking a matter of minutes or hours, and it would still grow exponentially. It's still going to reproduce faster than any cancerous cells, right?
It seems to me that the bigger hurdle for a pathogen is avoiding or defeating our immune systems, that seems like a much more complex challenge than being resistant to an antibiotic, and clearly there is no tradeoff there.
UV resistance of course isn't much of an issue, as you typically wouldn't be using UV to treat a bacterial infection, but I don't think it's at all safe to assume that being resistant to one thing makes a bug safer in other ways.