Hello Lauralemon,
What a very interesting question!
Picture it: the beginnings of earth? archaea, a primitive organism
(bacterial microbes), living in very acidic waters and volcanoes.
These tough organisms can survive the harshest conditions. Scientists
thnk perhaps protein from this organism is responsible for much of the
marine ecosystem.
Some scientists believe ? ?that the heat and geochemical
conditions in volcanic regions may be similar to conditions that
existed on the young, water-covered, cooling Earth. Almost like a
creature from science fiction, the volcanic microbe is different from
the two other basic branches of life: bacteria and eukaryotes. The
prokaryotes are the bacteria, while eukaryotes are the so-called
higher forms of life, including humans, plants and animals.?
?16 September, 1998: They may be small, but they're very hot.
They're the archaea, an ancient branch of microbial life on Earth
discovered by scientists in 1977. Unlike the better known bacteria and
eukaryotes (plants and animals), many of the archaea can thrive in
extreme environments like volcanic vents and acidic hot springs. They
can live without sunlight or organic carbon as food, and instead
survive on sulfur, hydrogen, and other materials that normal organisms
can't metabolize. It may sound like science fiction, but many
scientists are working rapidly to explore the biology as well as the
practical benefits of these recently discovered life forms.?
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad16sep98_1.htm
The bacteria?s role is part of a delicate ecosystem ? they become the
smallest part of the food chain in their environment!
?The residents of the vent community, although surely not the
prettiest creatures, are perhaps the most fascinating of all the
world's underwater wonders from a scientific perspective. At the
geothermal vents, marine biologists have an opportunity to study a
food chain that functions without sunlight. Most biologists had once
believed that only sunlight, through photosynthesis, could support
life on Earth. At the vents, however, life begins with bacteria that
metabolize hydrogen sulfide. The bacteria, in turn, become food for
the other animals in the vent community.?
http://wonderclub.com/WorldWonders/VentsHistory.html
?Life requires energy to maintain its organization (something that is
lost on creationist when they try to show that life contradicts the
second law of thermodynamics). Volcanic heat is a form of energy, and
so the volcanic heat released along the Mid-Ocean Ridge can supply
energy to the surrounding lifeforms--bacteria as well as the blood-red
tube worms. From an analysis the sequence of DNA in a wide range of
life forms, many scientists have come to the conclusion that the most
primitive (that is, earliest) form of life originated along the
volcanic vents of the ocean. The ocean is the cradle of life and the
volcanism gave the energy to that life. On land, similar types of
bacteria to the ocean-floor dwelling bacteria is found in the geysers
of Yellowstone . . and so volcanic heat on land can also maintain
life.?
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp13/question3400.html
?Microbes have been found at the bottom of the ocean around volcanic
vents, in polar ice and in boiling pools. As a control, the scientists
ran the same experiment using microbes that had been killed by heat.?
http://www.volcanolive.com/news19.html
?Bacteria synthesize chemicals in the hot water and live on the excess
energy. Other life forms eat the bacteria. Tubeworms (image above)
have no mouths or digestive systems. The chemosynthetic bacteria live
inside the worms and transfer energy directly to the worms? cells. The
entire community exists without sunlight.
Still, as far as we can tell, life does require liquid water. Some
organisms produce spores that can survive for centuries without water,
but they need water to spring back to life. Others thrive in the
near-boiling water of hot springs, but the water is still liquid.
Nevertheless, the discovery of life that uses energy sources internal
to the Earth undermines the concept of a habitable ?zone?: Life could
exist on a planet with a molten core or with tidal heating regardless
of its distance from its sun.?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050609tubeworms.htm
?Two basic kinds of oases are now known from the oceans. Hot vents,
first discovered in 1977, are now known from several places along the
Mid-Oceanic Ridge. These seafloor geysers belch out seawater heated up
to 400°C and laden with nutritious chemicals. Dramatic colonies of
large clams, giant tubeworms, and other strange life-forms have been
discovered at some hot vents.?
?Specially evolved bacteria oxidize the methane, forming the
foundation of a food chain. Different bacteria have evolved to oxidize
the foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide, itself the waste product of yet
other bacteria living below the ocean floor, which oxidize sulfate
ions of seawater origin.
The conspicuous and, by bacteria standards, large sulfur bacteria
(Beggiatoa spp.) form thin, snow-like mats on the seafloor where
seepage takes place. Bacterial mats form at hot vents also, but
Beggiatoa is common at cool oceanic seeps and some non-seep
environments where hydrogen sulfide rises close to the seafloor and
oxygen is present in the water.?
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_vogt.html
?The Food Chain at the Vent
... what was going on ...with the basis of the food chain, the source
of the energy to power the biology at this remote location. Prior to
the discovery of the hydrothermal vents, most biologists believed that
all life depended upon the energy of sunlight. That is, the basis of
the food chain was photic energy which powered photosynthesis,
obviously in green plants that went down the chain with animals eating
plants, and animals eating animals. When the hydrothermal vents were
discovered, it was clear very rapidly that they were a very enriched
biological environment, very, very remote from the surface sunlight.
It was difficult to imagine that energy could basically drift down in
high enough quantities to nurture this environment.
Other interesting data that came to mind, or that came to be known,
were that most of the animals here, the large invertebrates, basically
had no digestive system. The large tubeworm, Riftia, has no mouth, no
gut, no anus. However, it is a huge animal - they're about a 1.5 M in
length and up to 2 cm in diameter and there are many, many of them in
these hydrothermal vent sites. So the question was, how are they
managing to make a living down there?
... were harboring bacteria within their body cavities. Now bacteria,
free living bacteria, in this environment and in our own backyard,
have been known for years to be able to use chemical energy as a basis
of their metabolism. So in the case of the free living bacteria, there
are many sulfide oxidizing bacteria which can use chemical sulfide to
basically run their metabolic pathways - to produce organic compounds,
small nutrient compounds, that form the basis of their nutrition. What
is happening in some of the hydrothermal vent animals is that they are
harboring these chemical utilizing bacteria, within their body
tissues. So for instance the large tubeworm, Riftia, and the clam,
Caliptogena, harbored dense aggregations of bacteria, either in what
was the residual gut of the tubeworm or in the gill area for the clam.
These bacteria then are able to utilize the inorganic chemicals in the
environment. They utilize hydrogen sulfide. What they do with the
hydrogen sulfide is analogous to what plants do with photic energy. So
it is called chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis.?
There is plenty more information on this site!
http://www.resa.net/nasa/ocean_hydrothermal.htm
These pages will interest you:
http://users.otenet.gr/~tzelepisk/yc/exps.htm
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/extremophiles_000518.html
There you go! Hope this helps. If this is not the answer you were
seeking, please request an Answer Clarification, and allow me to
respond, before you rate this answer.
Sincerely, Crabcakes
Search Terms
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Volcanic vent + bacteria
Themophilic bacteria + volcano vents |
