EXTREMOPHILES

What’s your ideal environment? Sunny, 25 degrees Celsius and a light breeze? How about living in nearly boiling water? Or living in a soup saltier than any ocean? If you’re an extremophile, that might sound perfect. Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in “extreme” environments. The name, first used in 1974 in a paper by a scientist named R.D. MacElroy, literally means “extreme-loving”. These creatures are remarkable not only because of the environments in which they live, but also because many of them couldn’t survive in normal environments. For example, the microorganism Ferroplasma acidiphilum needs a large amount of iron to survive. That amount of iron can kill most other life forms.

Extremophiles have the ability to withstand conditions such as high radiation, high or low pressure, high or low pH, lack of light, extreme heat, extreme cold and extreme dryness. For example, in December 2012, researchers reported that tardigrades were able to survive being cooled to -270C. They were also able to survive after spending 10 days exposed to space and solar radiation.

The discovery of extremophiles, beginning in the 1960s, has caused scientists to reassess how life began on Earth. Every year, researchers discover and name thousands of new species. In recent years, microorganisms have formed an important part of this enormous growth in species discovery. More than 2 million species have been identified around the planet, but some experts speculate that 100 million or more may exist.