Multicellular organism that lives without oxygen found

ScienceMag.org:

Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above.

Quite interesting, especially:

The find could help scientists understand what life might have looked like in the earth's early oceans, which also had very little oxygen.

So, now it has been confirmed for good, that advanced lifeforms could have been possible at the early stages of life.
Multicellular organisms don't have to rely on oxygen for survival, meaning that the chance of the existence of extraterrestrial microbes on other planets, just increased quite a bit.

[edit on 8/4/10 by Thain Esh Kelch]

reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch


So Earth will be extraterrestrial:

www.cawa.fr...

Oxygen-deprived "dead zones" like the one that blankets 40 percent of the Chesapeake Bay each summer are increasing in size and number throughout the world, according to a new global study led by a Virginia Institute of Marine Science professor.

The number of known dead zones worldwide has increased by a third since 1995, the last time that VIMS professor Robert Diaz and Swedish professor Rutger Rosenberg collaborated to piece together how pollution from densely populated areas is blotting out life in coastal waters. Diaz and Rosenberg counted 305 dead zones in 1995 and 405 in 2007.

[edit on 8-4-2010 by drew hempel]

all life on earth has Deoxyribonucleic acid, do u see oxy anywhere in he word Deoxyribonucleic acid?

i wonder if there are any possible biotechnology applications of this organism's genome which would enable humans to produce energy in a similar fashion.


a genetic transformation that enables humans to not require breathing would surely prove to be useful, no?

reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch

So, now it has been confirmed for good, that advanced lifeforms could have been possible at the early stages of life. Multicellular organisms don't have to rely on oxygen for survival, meaning that the chance of the existence of extraterrestrial microbes on other planets, just increased quite a bit.

I don't think the idea has ever been seriously scoffed at or refuted. For as long as I can remember (or at least - since extremophiles were discovered) scientists have been hypothesizing about the different possible varieties and forms of life - both microbial and multicellular. Usually this focused around replacing carbon as the bonding molecule which serves as the backbone for life. Silicon, Arsenic, Chlorine, Nitrogen Phosphates, etc. The thing is, we just never had any examples to point to and pull the hypothesis from "theoretically possible" into the realm of actual theory.

This organism you linked to is still carbon based, and doesn't change that... but it does reveal a great deal about the origins of life on Earth, and does broaden our perspective with actual biology - rather than potential biology. That's it's biggest implication... not for life elsewhere, but for how life here originated.

If you want to talk about strange biochemistry, one of my favorites is Ferroplasma. Ferroplasma is a single celled organism from the domain archaea (Bacteria and Eukaryota, *us*, are the other two main domains of life). This organism lives in an environment with a pH equivalent to battery acid, digests iron, and craps sulfuric acid as a byproduct.

This is an exciting time to be watching whats going on in science, because we're just now starting to realize the breadth and variety of life which exists on planet Earth. Craig Venter's trip around the worlds oceans to sequence the genomes of the life he sampled along the way managed to triple the known species list in only a few months. Tripled it. And not just microscopic stuff either, but multicellular organisms and even bacteria (Epulopiscium sp.) large enough to see with the naked eye. It's about the size of the period at the end of this sentience. And as we learn about this new stuff, we get better at working with the stuff we already know about. We've learned more about infectious disease in the last two years than we've learned about in the previous 500 years combined.

Originally posted by tgidkp
i wonder if there are any possible biotechnology applications of this organism's genome which would enable humans to produce energy in a similar fashion.

I'm not sure about that specific life form, but biofuels are starting to get some serious attention as viable alternatives. Another one of those new life forms Craig Venter discovered was a species of Algae which consumed CO2 and crapped octane fuels. His company Synthetic Genomics recently entered a $600 million dollar deal with Exxon Mobil to try to create the necessary genomic modifications so that it outputs are viable to industrial production. An obvious source of rich CO2 feed stock are the sequestration initiatives other industries (such as coal power) are starting that would otherwise just bury the CO2 back underground.

Biofuels doesn't mean "Corn Ethanol", which (IMO) is just a failed proposition that's still hasn't died in a desperate attempt to make a return on hasty investment capitol. Juan Enriquez gave a recent talk on TED titled "Why can't we grow new energy", which you might find interesting.

Originally posted by bigspud
all life on earth has Deoxyribonucleic acid, do u see oxy anywhere in he word Deoxyribonucleic acid?

Before talking about the naming of chemical structures, you should really look things up. There are several oxygen atoms in deoxyribonucleics acids.

Originally posted by tgidkp
i wonder if there are any possible biotechnology applications of this organism's genome which would enable humans to produce energy in a similar fashion.
a genetic transformation that enables humans to not require breathing would surely prove to be useful, no?

It would be usefull, and I myself have often played with the thought of doing the same thing, but with chloroplasts instead.
But take if from a geneticist - It is by no means a trivial experiment, and just getting chloroplasts to work in single cellular organisms, such as the model yeast, would take many years and several work groups.

Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch

 

So, now it has been confirmed for good, that advanced lifeforms could have been possible at the early stages of life. Multicellular organisms don't have to rely on oxygen for survival, meaning that the chance of the existence of extraterrestrial microbes on other planets, just increased quite a bit.

I don't think the idea has ever been seriously scoffed at or refuted. For as long as I can remember (or at least - since extremophiles were discovered) scientists have been hypothesizing about the different possible varieties and forms of life - both microbial and multicellular.

I'm wasn't thinking of multicellular life in general, just more complex animal-like lifeforms, before the onset of plants and thereby an increase in the oxygen content of the atmosphere. The oceans could have been thriving with advanced life much longer then we had expected it to!