The mystery microbes making rock in a Chilean lake
Analysis of an extremophile habitat reveals a surprising absence, and throws up many questions. Andrew Masterson reports.
Unknown microbes with unknown metabolisms may be living in one of the world’s harshest environments – an area in Chile so tough that even cyanobacteria, the almost ubiquitous phylum that includes blue-green algae, struggle to survive.
Discovering these as yet unidentified microbes, and revealing how they function, could provide valuable insight into how life developed on the early Earth, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.
A team of scientists, led by microbiologist Maria Eugenia Farias of the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Microbiologicas de Lagunas Andinas in Argentina, set out to examine the microbial diversity found in Laguna La Brava, a lake in Chile’s Salar de Atacama salt flat.
The lake is extreme even by the standards of extremophiles: it is characterised by hyper-salinity, high levels of solar radiation, and the water itself contains significant amounts of metals, including lithium, arsenic, magnesium and calcium. It is one of the most unfriendly environments on the planet.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/the-mystery-microbes-making-rock-in-a-chilean-lake
