Gold Bug May Be Key To Alien Life

[Dover]

Okay, give it your best shot. This one is begging for a DUzy.
Discovered just in time for our market collapse...


Goldmine Bug DNA May Be Key to Alien Life


A bug discovered deep in a goldmine and nicknamed "the bold traveller" has got astrobiologists buzzing with excitement. Its unique ability to live in complete isolation of any other living species suggests it could be the key to life on other planets.

A community of the bacteria Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator has been discovered 2.8 kilometres beneath the surface of the Earth in fluid-filled cracks of the Mponeng goldmine in South Africa. Its 60°C home is completely isolated from the rest of the world, and devoid of light and oxygen.

Dylan Chivian of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, studied the genes found in samples of the fluid to identify the organisms living within it, expecting to find a mix of species. Instead, he found that 99.9% of the DNA belonged to one bacterium, a new species. The remaining DNA was contamination from the mine and the laboratory.

"The fact that the community contains only one species stands one of the basic tenets of microbial ecology on its head," says Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, who was not involved in Chivian's DNA analysis but whose team made the initial discovery that there were microbes living in this particular fissure two years ago...cont'd

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5998582&page=1

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[kenny blankenship]

2. And here is the difference between science and religion:

When contradictory or unexpected evidence is found by science, it causes excitement. When contradictory evidence is found by religion, it is burned.

[Orrex]

11. And so is the person who presents the contradictory evidence, as often as not

Sometimes only metaphorically, but still...

[opihimoimoi]

3. KnR

[alittlelark]

4. PAGING SWAMPRAT Where is SWAMPRAT ?

This is sooo needing an image.

[mcg]

5. "gets its energy from the radioactive decay of uranium"

"It has genes to extract carbon from dissolved carbon dioxide and other genes to fix nitrogen ... D. audaxviator has genes to produce all the amino acids it needs. ... D. audaxviator can also protect itself from environmental hazards by forming endospores – tough shells that protect its DNA and RNA from drying out, toxic chemicals and from starvation. It has a flagellum to help it navigate."

Amazing

[laconicsax]

6. Amazing!

What a magnificent creation design by God some unknown designer! This is why I'm a cdesign proponentist.

God Design: 1
Evolution: 0

[Peace Patriot]

7. Totally cool! Thanks for the post! I'm passing it along to others. nt

[Hekate]

8. This is truly marvelous. Gaia hypothesis? This ball of earth, water, air, fire is one vast inter-

-connected web of all being. Life is everywhere. At the bottom of the sea by thermal vents. Encased in ice in Antarctica. Squeezed into stone miles below the surface.

And at the very center? I'm beginning to think: fire elementals. Phoenix and dragon eggs. Salamanders.

I know those are myths, but scientific awe makes me revert to the mythic.

Hekate

[comtec]

9. IF It feeds on Uranium decay can we use it for Nuclear waste?

Just a thought...
Might be a new way (of course natural) to "eat up" all that U238... :)

[anigbrowl]

10. Sounds like a good idea, but...