Microbe architects build live-in rocks

• Autores: Colin Barras
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3020, 2015, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • None are quite like the microbes Jeffrey Marlow's team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have found below the seabed at methane seeps near Oregon. These microorganisms oxidize methane and generate bicarbonate ions that help them build vast limestone slabs in the soft sediment. What makes them truly unusual, though, is their bizarre lifestyle: they seem to continue living inside cavities within the limestone they create. That life of self-entombment is so unlike anything else seen on Earth that Marlow and his colleagues propose giving it a new name: such microbes should be called autoendoliths.