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Shedding Light on the Protein Big Bang Theory March 13, 2009 — The precise three-dimensional structure of a typical protein molecule is so complex, its origin would seem hopeless by chance. What if evolutionary biologists were to discover a whole host of proteins literally exploded into existence at the beginning of complex life? We can find out what they would think by looking at an article on the “protein big bang” found on Astrobiology Magazine...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2009) — As the world marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, there is much focus on evolution in animals and plants. But new research shows that for the countless billions of tiniest creatures – microbes – large-scale evolution was completed 2.5 billion years ago. "For microbes, it appears that almost all of their major evolution took place before we have any record of them, way back in the dark mists of prehistory," said Roger Buick, a University of Washington paleontologist and astrobiologist. All living organisms need nitrogen, a basic component of amino acids and proteins....

The idea that life on Earth might have originated elsewhere, on Mars, for example, has gained currency in recent times as we’ve learned more about the transfer of materials between planets. Mars cooled before the Earth and may well have become habitable at a time when our planet was not. There seems nothing particularly outrageous in the idea that dormant bacteria inside chunks of the Martian surface, blasted into space by comet or asteroid impacts, might have crossed the interplanetary gulf and given rise to life here. But what of an interstellar origin for life on Earth? The odds on...

Imagine a form of life so unusual that we cannot figure out how it dies. That’s exactly what researchers are finding beneath the floor of the sea off Peru. The microbes being studied there — single-celled organisms called Archaea — live in time frames that can perhaps best be described as geological. Consider: A bacteria like Escherichia Coli divides and reproduces every twenty minutes or so. But the microbes in the so-called Peruvian Margin take hundreds or thousands of years to divide. “In essence, these microbes are almost, practically dead by our normal standards,” says Christopher H. House (Penn State)....

Scientists Find Microbes That Eat Garbage, Excrete Crude Oil Tuesday, June 17, 2008 "Ten years ago I could never have imagined I'd be doing this," says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. "I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to — especially the ones coming out of business school — this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into." He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs — very, very small bacteria — so that when they feed on...

Diesel fuel produced by genetically-engineered bugs.Several Silicon Valley companies are already genetically altering microbes and small organisms--bugs, so to speak--so that they produce something for nothing. The something? How about petroleum products. The nothing? How about agricultural waste--wood chips or straw or other biomass. The organisms eat the waste products and excrete crude oil. “Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones...

The same bacteria that cause frost damage on plants can help clouds to produce rain and snow. Studies on freshly fallen snow suggest that ‘bio-precipitation’ might be much more common than was suspected. Before a cloud can produce rain or snow, rain drops or ice particles must form. This requires the presence of aerosols: tiny particles that serve as the nuclei for condensation. Most such particles are of mineral origin, but airborne microbes — bacteria, fungi or tiny algae — can do the job just as well. Unlike mineral aerosols, living organisms can catalyse ice formation even at temperatures close...

WASHINGTON - Microorganisms locked in Antarctic ice for 100,000 years and more came to life and resumed growing when given warmth and nutrients in a laboratory. Researchers led by Kay Bidle of Rutgers University tested five samples of ice ranging in age from 100,000 years to 8 million years. "We didn't really know what to expect. We knew that microorganisms were really hardy," Bidle, an assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences, said in a telephone interview. The findings are reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers tested samples of the oldest...

Web address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070228082232.htm Source: University of Delaware Date: March 2, 2007 More on: Water, Microbes and More, Virology, Viruses, Sustainability, Environmental Issues New Technology Removes Viruses From Drinking Water Science Daily — University of Delaware researchers have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms, including viruses, from drinking water.Pei Chiu (left), an associate professor in UD's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Yan Jin, a professor of environmental soil physics in UD's plant and soil sciences department, have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms from drinking water, including viruses. (Credit: Image...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers on a safari for microbes have found that human skin is populated by a veritable menagerie of bacteria -- 182 species -- some apparently living there permanently and others just dropping by for a visit. There's no need for alarm, said microbiologist Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University School of Medicine: the bacteria have been with us for quite a while and some are helpful. In research published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Blaser and his colleagues took swabs from the forearms of six healthy people to study the...

Gassy Bugs: Microbes may produce propane under the sea Julie Rehmeyer For decades, scientists have been puzzled by periodic findings of ethane and propane in sediments that they've pulled from deep below the ocean floor. As far as they knew, these gases could be produced only as petroleum is—by great heat applied to ancient, buried organic matter. But sometimes, ethane and propane turn up in areas where that process seems unlikely. A new report suggests a different source: microbes. Bacteria and archaea within underwater sediments could chew up buried organic material and spew out ethane and propane as waste products,...

17 March 2006, 14:40 The sign of the cross and Orthodox prayer are capable of killing microbes and change the optical properties of water - a study Moscow, March 17, Interfax - Scientists have proved experimentally the miracle-working properties of the sign of the cross and prayer. ‘We have ascertained that the old custom to make a sign of the cross over food and drink before a meal has a profound mystical meaning. Standing behind it is the practical use: the food is purified literally in an instant. This is a great miracle, which happens literally every day,’ physicist Angelina...

Researchers say a bizarre group of microbes found living inside rocks in an inhospitable geothermal environment at Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park could provide tantalizing new clues about ancient life on Earth and help steer the hunt for evidence of life on Mars. University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) scientists Jeffrey Walker, John Spear and Norman Pace report the finding in the April 21 issue of the journal Nature. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. The CU-Boulder research team reported that the microbes were discovered in the pores of rocks in a highly acidic environment with...

Researchers at Luca Technologies have made a discovery regarding natural gas production in Wyoming's Powder River Basin that could lead to a renewable source of energy for generations to come. The company today announced that laboratory evidence shows that the Powder River Basin (PRB) coals are generating natural gas in real time through the ongoing activity of anaerobic microbes (bacteria that live in the absence of oxygen) resident in those coal fields. The company has termed sites where this microbial conversion of hydrocarbon deposits (coals, organic shales, or oil) to methane occurs "Geobioreactors," and believes the careful management of such...

An invisible, trillions-strong, hoard of microbes may have set up camp in your shower, a scientist is warning. The bathroom bugs could present a threat to health, especially for vulnerable people with weak immune systems, says Professor Norman Pace, from the University of Colorado. Just one square inch of the average used vinyl shower curtain could harbour billions of the "soap scum" organisms, he says. Every time the shower is turned on, water hitting the curtain throws up clouds of bacteria which could fly into the lungs and any open wounds. Pace discovered the bacteria's hiding place after testing four...

CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - A group of drug-resistant microbes that infect the intestine have become much more common among hospitalized patients and in the general community over the last decade, a Spanish team of researchers report. The bacteria are called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are concerning because these microbes are resistant to drugs called cephalosporins, and most can evade other types of antibiotics too. Dr. Rafael Canton of Hospital Ramon y Cajal in Madrid presented his team's findings here at the 43rd annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The researchers compared more than 1200 stool samples...

<p>NASA plans to crash its $1.5 billion Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next weekend to make sure it doesn't accidentally contaminate the red planet's ice-covered moon Europa with bacteria from Earth.</p> <p>After Galileo's orbit carries it behind Jupiter at 12:49 p.m. PDT Sunday, the aging probe will plunge into the planet's stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 108,000 mph.</p>

hat started as a hunch is now illuminating the origins of life. A few years back, Dr. Derek R. Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts found that a few kinds of bacteria used iron as a means of respiration (just as humans use oxygen to burn food) and that a surprising but common byproduct of this form of microbial breathing was magnetite, a hard black magnetic mineral. The scientists wondered if hidden swarms of microbes might account for the vast deposits of magnetite that dot the earth and sea. So they turned to one of the strangest, most...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 28 The Lost World of Lake Vida Credit & Copyright: Thomas Nylen & Andrew Fountain (PSU), NASA, NSF Explanation: A lake hidden beneath 19 meters of ice has been found near the bottom of the world that might contain an ecosystem completely separate from our own. In a modern version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic book Lost World, scientists are now plotting a mission to...

NASA nanometer breakthrough uses hot pond protein You couldn't make it up By Paul Hales: Wednesday 27 November 2002, 11:35 NASA SCIENTISTS say they have invented a breakthrough biological method to make ultra-small structures that could be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today’s components. The scientists apparently use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them. These naturally-occurring microbes live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs, according to an article in on-line version of the journal Nature Materials. One of the scientists, Andrew McMillan,...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 29 Venus: Just Passing By Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: Venus, the second closest planet to the Sun, is a popular way-point for spacecraft headed for the gas giant planets in the outer reaches of the solar system. Why visit Venus first? Using a "gravity assist " maneuver, spacecraft can swing by planets and gain energy during their brief encounter saving fuel for use at...

“OUR RESEARCHERS have mapped the genome of a strange bug that lives quite happily in an environment that has 1 million times the radiation that a human could withstand,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a ceremony awarding the grants. “Now that we have sequenced the bug, we are ready to turn it to our own advantage,” he added. Abraham hopes scientists can find a way to use the bacterium to clean up nuclear waste. “We can make bugs that eat carbon dioxide, we can make trees grow in climates that are barren today,” he added. UNDERSTANDING THE DNA Genomics studies...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 27 Carving Ma'adim Vallis Credit: R. Irwin III (CEPS/NASM,UVa), T. Maxwell, A. Howard, R. Craddock, D. Leverington Explanation: Just as erosion from the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon on Earth, a river of flood water may have carved Ma'adim Vallis, one of the largest canyons on Mars. Researchers have presented strong evidence for such a scenario based on elevation data recorded by the MOLA (Mars...