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----- Original Message -----
From:
Ron
Kaufmann
To: Discussion of aroids
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 3:34
PM
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] OT: Fungi that eat
ionizing radiation?
Hi Steve, The melanin story is very
interesting, and if it's true that melanin changes in response to ionizing
radiation exposure and may facilitate survival of organisms under conditions
that otherwise might be lethal, the repercussions could be many and
far-reaching. Cool stuff! As for the National
Geographic special, I'd like to address a few factual issues in what you
wrote. First, there are *many* areas of the ocean where hydrothermal
vents are spewing hot, mineral-rich water into the deep sea. The
existence of biological communities around many of those vent sites has been
known for 30 years, and many vent communities and organisms have been studied
extensively. The word "noxious" to describe some of the chemicals that
are released by vents is somewhat human-centered. For example, many
organisms that live in anoxic conditions might describe oxygen as
"noxious". :-) Second, the communities around deep-sea
hydrothermal vents are indeed supported by primary producers (mostly bacteria)
that use "noxious" hydrogen sulfide or methane as energy sources. It's a
fascinating system that prior to 30 years ago would have been considered
science fiction! Finally, the issue of organisms living in
nearly 800 degree Fahrenheit water was a subject of controversy among the
biologists who first studied the vent systems. The deep sea is, for the
most part, very cold (1-2 deg C = 34-36 deg F), and it turns out that
temperature gradients near hot vents are *extremely* steep. The water
coming out of a vent may approach 800 deg F (over 400 deg C) at the hottest
sites, but a few inches away the temperature may be a relatively mild 125-160
deg F (50-70 deg C). Most hydrothermal vent organisms seem to live on
the fringes of the hot water plume, not within the hottest water.Ron
Kaufmannkaufmann@sandiego.edu
ExoticRainforest wrote:
Ted,
Far be it for me to discredit or vouch for any of
this! But I did find it interesting due to another interest dear to my
heart. I'm one of less than a thousand people in the world who can
document having logged over 5000 scuba dives. My time in the
water as a professional underwater photographer included time in a deep
submersible. Never got to go down to the deep water in the
mid-Atlantic rift or the really deep water off Galapagos but I recently saw
a National Geographic special which featured deep ocean dives to both areas
of the ocean where live volcanoes are constantly spewing on the ocean
floor. The National Geographic team found large incredible marine life
actually using the noxious gasses produced by these volcanoes as a food
source. And to top that, many were living in water with a temp
approaching 800 degrees! Some were photographed crawling into vents so
hot it was actually burning them alive and they were happily gathering and
eating the stuff!
Nothing ought to be able to live in complete darkness,
with extremely high temperatures while using "poisons" as food, but
they do! So I don't have any idea if anything in this article is
factual, but apparently life can and does exist in places we would not have
previously expected it to survive. Perhaps the "Blob" exists as
well!
Steve Lucas
www.ExoticRainforest.com
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