background preloader

Biology

Facebook Twitter

Inside a Cell. General Biology Video Lecture Course. Neuroscience News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - io9. The Inner Life of a Cell Explained HQ. Hot springs microbe yields record-breaking, heat-tolerant enzyme. Bioprospectors from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland School of Medicine have found a microbe in a Nevada hot spring that happily eats plant material – cellulose – at temperatures near the boiling point of water. In fact, the microbe’s cellulose-digesting enzyme, called a cellulase, is most active at a record 109 degrees Celsius (228 degrees Fahrenheit), significantly above the 100℃ (212℉) boiling point of water. A 94°C geothermal pool, with a level-maintaining siphon, near Gerlach, Nevada.

Sediment from the floor of this pool was enriched on pulverized miscanthus at 90°C and subsequently transferred to filter paper in order to isolate microbes able to subsist on cellulose alone. (Credit: Joel Graham, University of Maryland) This so-called hyperthermophilic microbe, discovered in a 95℃ (203℉) geothermal pool, is only the second member of the ancient group Archaea known to grow by digesting cellulose above 80℃.

For more information: