DailyDirt: Strange Forms Of Life...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Jun 2nd 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Nature has plenty of surprises left for us. Life exists in some extreme environments that you wouldn't think anything would survive, but somehow little creatures are still thriving in some of the coldest, darkest, most acidic, hottest and just unusual places. Life just needs to be able to feed on something -- light, sugar, electricity. Here are just a few bizarre discoveries in biology.

Mitochondria are commonly called the "powerhouses" of complex living cells, and biologists have been looking for years to see if there are any examples of eukaryotes that do not have mitochondria. They've finally found an example -- in the gut of a pet chinchilla -- but it is NOT the missing link of eukaryotic evolution. This microbe's ancestors are known to have mitochondria, so this particular organism somehow lost its mitochondria and managed to survive using other non-mitochondrial mechanisms. [url]
There are a few photosynthetic animals in nature. And if you're really into transhumanism or biohacking, maybe humans can engineer a symbiotic way to metabolize sunlight and forget about eating or breathing. [url]
Some "electric bacteria" can feed directly on electrons flowing from an electrode. These "electricity breathers" in sediment have been found in vastly different locations in California, and researchers have identified at least 8 different kinds of electric bacteria. [url]

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Filed Under: animals, bacteria, biohacking, biology, biotech, electric bacteria, extremophiles, life, microbes, mitochondria, photosynthesis

7 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jun 2016 @ 6:03pm

Photosynthesis requires breathing
I am not a specialist biologist, but my courses in such did highlight that all plants that use photosynthesis also breathed in CO2 and breathed out O2, and when not doing photosynthesis at night breathed out CO2 and breathed in O2.

Hence, metabolising sunlight will still require some sort of breathing on the part of organisms.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jun 2016 @ 6:23pm

Re: Photosynthesis requires breathing
Well, technically, if you're going to nit-pick on the breathing, plants need to "eat" too, right?

I think the suggestion here is for there to be some kind of way to avoid "traditional eating/breathing" by having algae in your skin to produce sugars and oxygen directly into your bloodstream. Not that any organism would be able to avoid any kind of respiration entirely.
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ijuin, 2 Jun 2016 @ 10:14pm

The problem with humans photosynthesizing is that humans burn energy several times faster than a human-skin-sized area receives sunlight. We'd have to either spend the entire day standing out in the sun while remaining perfectly still 24/7 in order to conserve energy, or else get ten square yards of extra skin surface to collect more sunlight.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2016 @ 12:33am

Re: Re: Photosynthesis requires breathing
I think the suggestion here is for there to be some kind of way to avoid "traditional eating/breathing" by having algae in your skin to produce sugars and oxygen directly into your bloodstream.
Yeah, well when no sunlight, CO2 into blood stream instead of O2. Somewhat problematic.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2016 @ 12:47am

Re: Re: Re: Photosynthesis requires breathing
Should have also added that photosynthetic cells would then be using sugars from body when no sunlight, Also problematic.
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Ninja (profile), 3 Jun 2016 @ 8:27am

Re:
We'd have to either spend the entire day standing out in the sun while remaining perfectly still 24/7 in order to conserve energy

Sounds an awfully lot like trees. ALL HAIL THE ENTS!
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Pronounce (profile), 3 Jun 2016 @ 12:19pm

Before Then We Have Breatharians
Some people claim they need nothing more than air (specifically a substance known as prana, aka life air) to survive (thrive? I'm not sure if they claim that).

When I first met my wife there was a time I didn't need to eat or sleep. Maybe it's like that.

I could never imagine living in such a euphoric state like that for too long, as it seems to have a significant impact on one's health. But maybe some have figured out how to leave The Matrix and so normal rules don't apply to them.
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