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stricnine
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Check out for acid mine drainage (AMD)
I am getting old. I used to push it aside with one hand... now I need both!
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Nerro
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Freely translated from a Dutch magazine for chemists,
Bacteria that live off radiation,
In a South African goldmine at a depth of 2.8 km a bacterial population was found that gets its energy from radioactive uranium ore. The radiation
cleaves watermolecules and forms sulphates from sulfur containing minerals. Bacteria from the species called Firmicutes extract their energy from the
reaction between sulphate and hydrogen. The substances excreted by these bacteria sustain a range of other bacteria. These micro organisms were found
in water that seeps into the mine through a fissure in the rocks. Comparison of the DNA found in the bacteria hints that they might have been cut off
from the outside world for as little as 3 million or as much as 25 million years.
That's pretty cool, that means there are bacteria that can sustain use dosages of radiation and actively use this energy, it's not surprising that
such bacteria exist but still! They must have DNA repair mechanisms that are far more effective than ours. It might be interesting to determine these
mechanisms, imagine having that DNA incorporated into your own! The potential to live free of cancer would certainly enhance life expectancy
enormously!
#261501 +(11351)- [X]
the \"bishop\" came to our church today
he was a fucken impostor
never once moved diagonally
courtesy of bash
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Ozone
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No kidding!
On further thought the organism I was referring to was Deinococcus radiodurans; this crazy thing can survive 15,000 *gray*. Is this the microorganism
found in the U ore in Africa? Remember, in Oklo (Gabon) there was ore of sufficient quantity and quality, with flowing groundwater. The water served
as a nice moderator, and a critical assembly operated transiently for millions of years (in nature!, this probably happened in the Black hills of
South Dakota, as well, where I found a mineral with a 235U abundance of significantly less than 0.75% with the whole McMillan-Ableson Neptunium
series--and, the 239Pu you would also expect). I'd expect to find these types of extremophiles in loci such has this.
Crazy to think how this is possible. One would have to consider that DNA repair such as this could lead to virtually immortal genomic materials; this
might be a problem since the repair is not always perfect. I'm still lost on what these buggers are eating, though (particularly since growing them is
complicated).
Please see:
http://science.nasa.gov/NEWHOME/headlines/ast14dec99_1.htm
an EM shot:
http://www.usuhs.mil/pat/deinococcus/index_20.htm
Of course, http://www.microbeworld.org/ is a cool site. AND: http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Deinococcus which has some nice references.
I'm a Chemist, but this is cool stuff! "Conan the bacterium" Yeh!
Cheers,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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Nixie
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| Quote: | Originally posted by The_Davster
I had a weird mould/fungus grow on the top of the gelatin solution when experimenting with leduc plants, it appeared in the testtube the 'plant' was
grow in after a few months despite saran wrap being tighty over the tube. Also years ago had a mould grow on a KNO3/sugar solution that I had left to
evaporate. |
I remember making Leduc plants as a kid in the old country. I'd like to do it again, but where do I get potassium ferrocyanide?
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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ShadowWarrior4444
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Quite recently on a whim I decided to attempt a simple (elementary school) culturing technique with one important modification--Sodium Silicate. I
took some sucrose, dissolved it in the sodium silicate, and applied to a bit of white bread in a petri dish, I then breathed on it, vigorously. The
petri dish was then sealed. After a day or so, growth did occur of one organism only: a peach colored one that grew predominantly along the bottom of
the bread, and somewhat away from the bread onto the plastic of the petri dish.
Then something even more interesting happened, the entire dish dried up. No water vapor, nor liquid at all. While keeping the dish closed, I picked it
up, and at some point the price of bread and the bacteria/fungus dislodged from the dish and slid down to a side wall, where to my surprise, the edge
of the bacteria's colony 'clicked' against the plastic. It was quite hard, and did not chip in the least despite a bit more aggressive testing. The
bacteria on the underside of the bread were also quite glassy.
[Edited on 5-8-2008 by ShadowWarrior4444]
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Nixie
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Crystalline bacteria? Are they eating rubber seals? 
[Edited on 8-5-2008 by Nixie]
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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ShadowWarrior4444
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Nixie
Crystalline bacteria? Are they eating rubber seals?
[Edited on 8-5-2008 by Nixie] |
Well, they appear to be dead/dormant at the moment, due to the lack of water. Actually, they most strongly reminded me of the Sand Trout in Dune
(Frank Herbert), on account of them seemingly "sequestering" all the water.
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jimwig
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organisms (bacteria, fungi) grow in the hot springs at Yellowstone.
around the fumorols at depth in the sea
is life predicated on carbon use? never gave it too much thought before. guess so.....
craZy jiM wGGns
--packrat, professional bum. -- once just tired
now REtired.
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ShadowWarrior4444
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| Quote: | Originally posted by jimwig
organisms (bacteria, fungi) grow in the hot springs at Yellowstone.
around the fumorols at depth in the sea
is life predicated on carbon use? never gave it too much thought before. guess so..... |
There are some theories on very early Iron-Sulfur life forms over deep geothermal vents in the ocean, however for the most part terrestrial life is
carbon based.
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chemoleo
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Come on, without carbon no life is possible. No conditions we know of here on earth would facilitate complex (I mean complex as in living things)
chemistry without carbon. In fact I'd wager strong doubts as to whether any carbon-free life is possibly under *any* conditions!
But perhaps Europa will prove us otherwise, or perhaps ET life in a few hundred years time...
From what I remember,
Deinococcus Radiodurans (I gave a talk about that one once) achieves this radiation resistance by having multiple (not just one, as usual for
bacteria) copies of the bacterial genome, and it has a certain mechanism for copying intact pieces of DNA into corrupted DNA , thus constantly fixing
and backup-ing the data. I'll have a look in my files and see if I can find the presentation.
Never Stop to Begin, and Never Begin to Stop...
Tolerance is good. But not with the intolerant! (Wilhelm Busch)
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Nixie
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| Quote: | | Originally posted by chemoleoIn fact I'd wager strong doubts as to whether any carbon-free life is possibly under *any* conditions!
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I remember a suggestion that under extremely high pressure silicon-based complex life may be possible (i.e. the hard surface on gas giants that have
solid cores). Radioactive decay as energy source. Pretty extreme but hey, you never know. Another one was if complex configurations of nucleons
could exist under the extreme gravity of some layers of a neutron star, then you could speculate that life might evolve and its processes would run
orders of magnitude faster than molecular life.
[Edit:] There's a discussion about scientists considering silicon life here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/siliconlife.html
[Edit:] Apparently, even plasma has been seriously considered: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/plasma-based_lif...
[Edited on 9-5-2008 by Nixie]
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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Saerynide
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| Quote: | Originally posted by chemoleo
I was absolutely amazed by it. I now am culturing them in a separate container, lets hope they continue growing; if they do I will have a look at them
under a microscope. Pictures to follow at some point.
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Wow, you've got balls to culture them. If in doubt, throw it out
"Microsoft reserves the right at all times to monitor communications on the Service and disclose any information Microsoft deems necessary to...
satisfy any applicable law, regulation or legal process"
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Nixie
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I'd expect chances some random bacteria are pathogenic are low.
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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phlogiston
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Since you gave a presentation on D. radiodurans, you probably know it was discovered by a guy who found them in a spoiled can of food (which is
sterilized by irradiating). Other people may have had spoiled cans of food before, but he was clever and asked the right question. Similarly, you may
have discovered a previously unkown organism in your CuSO4 tank, which hasn't been discovered any earlier because (1) not many people keep large
volumes of CuSO4 around, and (2) nobody had the required curiosity and/or bothered to check whether the stuff floating in their tank was an unusual
organism. A mycologist friend's friend discovered a previously unknown fungus in a plant pot in his house on a rainy saturday afternoon, just because
he had nothing to do and decided to look at the soil with his microscope, just to kill some time.
My point is, if you do actually manage to culture it, go see someone who can identify it for you and check if it is a known organism. You never know!
This type of bacteria might be useful, for instance for recovering metals from ore or cleaning up contamined soil.
-----
"If a rocket goes up, who cares where it comes down, that's not my concern said Wernher von Braun" - Tom Lehrer |
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sbovisjb1
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Thermophile's.... Organisms that grow at high temperatures. Never cease to amaze me where they pop up!
[Edited on 5-6-2008 by sbovisjb1]
\"Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacal
impulse to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames,
poisons and poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetly
that I would rather die than change places with the King of Persia.\"
-- Johann Joachim Becher
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Nixie
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| Quote: | Originally posted by sbovisjb1
Thermopile's |
Thanks for the good laugh!
"A thermopile is an electronic device that converts thermal energy into electrical energy. It is composed of thermocouples either connected in series
or in parallel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermopile
Don't know about them growing in warm places :X
Thermophiles, on the other hand...
[Edited on 4-6-2008 by Nixie]
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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sbovisjb1
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  Ooops. That proves that the devil is in the details....
\"Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacal
impulse to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames,
poisons and poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetly
that I would rather die than change places with the King of Persia.\"
-- Johann Joachim Becher
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crazyboy
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Water bears can survive some pretty crazy stuff.
"They can survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151°C (303°F), 1,000 times more radiation than any other animal,
nearly a decade without water, and can also survive in a vacuum like that found in space."
[url=]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrada[/url]
[Edited on 6-6-2008 by crazyboy]
[Edited on 6-6-2008 by crazyboy]
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Panache
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Mould
I lifted the lip recently on a 20L bucket about 2/3 full of a slop containing caustic, dextrose, water, silver, silver ions, copper, copper ions,
iron, iron ions and heaps of other crap that i had set aside to 'deal with later' after i realised i hadn't managed to extract all the silver from the
solution with the dextrose/caustic treatment. It was a turbid black ph~13-14 muck.
So i was shocked to find a very active mould on the surface (isn't silver supposed to be a fungicide). The bucket wasn't sealed but was covered, it
was so strange i have not removed it, rather I keep it as show and tell item, visually it appears not to have advanced since i first noticed it some 2
months ago. The bucket had been standing for some 6months. I work in a lab next to a distillery that distills wine so there's plenty of moulds and
yeasts around but wine yeasts are a tad more sensitive than anything that grew in this bucket eating i assume the small concentration of dextrose in
the solution.
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Panache
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from previous thread
more photos, for some reason i can only attach one at a time
[Edited on 29-9-2008 by Panache]
[Edited on 29-9-2008 by Panache]
[Edited on 29-9-2008 by Panache]
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12AX7
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Are you sure it's a mold and not gas? (Gas from what I don't know, CO2 will certainly remain in solution...) Does it grow back if you skim it off,
possibly adding more dextrose?
Tim
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Nixie
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Strange, this photo reminds me of something but I can't figure out what.
\"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.\" --Aldous Huxley
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Ramiel
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I sometimes fry things when cooking, like a party event, and decant and keep the oil for re-use. I was amazed to find an active colony of mould or
some such occupying the bottom of a full glass of oil! no doubt where the energy comes from, it just surprised me that it could be anaerobic.
Never again will I save oil for cooking!
Caveat Orator
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12AX7
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Maybe it was eating oxidized oil? 
Rancid oil is nasty shit...
Tim
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Panache
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| Quote: | Originally posted by 12AX7
Are you sure it's a mold and not gas? (Gas from what I don't know, CO2 will certainly remain in solution...) Does it grow back if you skim it off,
possibly adding more dextrose?
Tim |
I know the photos are tres crappy but didn't think they were that crappy. It's definitely a mould thick wrinkled fuzzy green, funnily silver powder
pools around the mould as the solution is so dense it floats, wonder if the mould was responsible for that workup of silver ions.
Today is D-day for the mould's int he bucket though and i will be trying to extarct the remainder of the silver with more dextrose caustic so i'll
leave it again and see if they reappear.
How does one identify a mould? If the answer is really long then just post a link to a any decent explanation you know of.
Also since we are in 'bio', what are those biochemistry flasks, that are an Erlenmeyer/conical, however they have a sealed glass tube running out the
side of them near the bottom. they must be a bitch to clean. they sure are annoying to stack, however the tube on the side makes a great handle for
hurling them at great speeds across the room.
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