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Temperature limit on life increased

A newly discovered microbe has bumped the upper temperature limit for life up to 121 °C, or about 250 °F. AUTHORS, found the heat-loving bug in a water sample from a hydrothermal vent deep in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. According to AUTHORS, the microbe--called strain 121 until it gets a formal species name--uses a novel method of respiration that reduces Fe(III) to Fe(II) to produce energy, making the mineral magnetite as a by-product. Strain 121 can replicate at temperatures from 85 to 121 °C. Even after 10 hours at 121 °C, strain 121 (left tube) can still reduce Fe(III) oxide, producing magnetic magnetite. The researchers observed no magnetite production in the absence of the microbe (right tube). That is particularly remarkable because medical equipment is normally sterilized at 121 °C, a temperature hot enough to kill all previously known microorganisms and heat-resistant spores, AUTHORS points out. But "the factors that permit strain 121 to grow at such high temperatures are unknown," he and AUTHORS write, adding that study of strain 121 s proteins might yield clues as to which ones allow the microbe to take the heat


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