EXTREMOPHILE MICROBES- A WONDER.

 

Humans always tend to straightjacket life into a mould that is known to us and life as defined by us has many limitations for existence. However, there are organisms on the Earth itself which actually defy our definition of life. They are known as Extremophile Microbes. They seem to live and thrive under extreme temperatures and pressures where none of the higher organisms can ever survive.  Because of such nature they are named Extremophile or lovers of Extremes.  

These organisms thrive in every nook and corner of the Earth where conditions are unberabale for habitation either for humans or even other animals.

Such Extremophiles live in volcanic vents, in Nuclear reactors; they are present in permafrost, acid mines, microwave ovens, and even in lakes buried under kilometres of polar ice caps. It was found that microbes existed on the outer walls of a Space station for 3 year period. There they would be bombarded by Cosmic rays which kill humans or any other animals, yet they survive there comfortably.

In the year 2011, scientists from Japan have found that microbes not only lived under an atmospheric pressure of 400,000 G, they thrived. That, when a pressure of 6 G can kill humans and other animals.

So climatic conditions are no barrier for microbes at all, they can virtually live anywhere. We consider microbes to be an inferior life form. However, they adopt to extreme environments easily by incorporating a set of unique biological and biochemical processes.

Humans have one set of similar proteins to navigate life while the Extremophile Microbes have multiple sets of Proteins. Amazingly depending on the conditions around them, they activate a set of proteins suitable for that environment.

They may be rudimentary life forms but I am surprised as to how they could develop such an ability which the so called higher animal species could not.

A huge research project on Microbes “Earth Microbiome Project” was launched in the yaer 2010 to sequence 200,000 generic samples and assemble 500,000 microbial genomes.

Another project is the “Earth Biogenome Project” to sequence the genomes of all the microbes of our planet and create a most comprehensive map of Eukaryotic organism on the Earth.