91暗网 contributed to an international that found almost 300 novel types of microbes living near a deep sea volcano. These microbes, which could be used in biotechnology, reveal new insights about their extreme underwater environment.
Two distinct communities of heat-loving and many acid-loving microbes live near Brother鈥檚 Volcano, located about 200 miles northeast of New Zealand and 6,000 feet underwater. Known as extremophiles, these microbes thrive in water heated by magma and hydrothermal vents.
Though they live close to one another, the microbial communities reflect differences in water chemistry and temperature from geological features. In analyzing the new bacterial and archaeal families, ORNL鈥檚 Mircea Podar thinks microbes like these can help better characterize extreme environments.
鈥淲e're heading to a point where microbes can be very informative about the environment they came from and even reflect some of the past,鈥� Podar said. 鈥淲ith more data, we can use microbes as a proxy to characterize environments where traditional measurements are challenging to capture.鈥�
