Researchers have discovered a new type of bacteria that survives by munching metal. Apparently, Scientists had studied about its existence long back but weren’t able to prove it. So why is metal their favourite food? Summachar’s Coverage: Rise Of The Living Concrete: Bacteria-Filled Bricks Built By Scientists
Crux of the Matter
A Metal Lover Indeed? The bacteria was found in California tap water and are yet to be named. The findings were published in the journal Nature, and there was no mention of its impact.
Metal-eating bacteria. Now available on Nature.https://t.co/hrFwQbir9v — Antonio López Reyes (@qtnet) July 17, 2020
How Was The Discovery Made? Jared Leadbetter, a microbiologist at Caltech in Pasadena, carried about an experiment, wherein he left a glass jar covered in the sink. Now that jar contained manganese (Mn), a chalk-like white metal used in stainless steel. After leaving it in his office sink for months, he found it covered in a mysterious dark substance.
What Happened Then? Scientists learned that Mn had been oxidized by a bacteria that could dine on everything from cars to cutlery, depending on its number. To further confirm its metal diet, the research team coated more jars with Mn and sterilized them using hot steam.
The coated jars with Mn, Source: Gigazine
Survival Of The Fittest Subsequently, they looked for 70 species of bacteria, ruling all of them out except the new one, which was autotrophic i.e had the ability to produce their own food using a source of energy.
What Does This Mean For The Scientific World? As per a Caltech geobiologist Woodward Fischer, “This discovery fills a major intellectual gap in our understanding of Earth’s elemental cycles.”
(Mn) Manganese Rock, Source: ICMAB
It also reveals how the bacteria can use Mn for a process called chemosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into biomass, which is plant or animal material used for energy production.
Can Deep Dive About Water Systems Too? This will help scientists know more about groundwater, and water systems that become clogged by manganese oxides. Many times, even Mn “nodules” are found on the seafloor, which are large metallic balls that contain metals of economic interest like Nickel, Copper, and Cobalt.
Diving deep down can lead to unravelling long lost mysteries indeed! Source:IE
Curiopedia
Amos Gager Throop was a businessman and politician in Chicago, Illinois during the 1840s and 1850s. He is now best known for founding in 1891 the California Institute of Technology, which is today one of the world’s most selective universities.
The word bacteria is the plural of the New Latin bacterium, which is the Latinisation of the Greek bakterion, meaning “staff, cane”, because the first ones to be discovered were rod-shaped.
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician and microbiologist. As one of the main founders of modern bacteriology, he identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. For his research on tuberculosis, Koch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
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