The search for life on Mars is not an easy one. Not only is the red planet difficult to get to, it's deeply inhospitable to life as we know it.
, or"acid lover", which are found living in acidic environments, and have a number of genes that allow them to do so.
The Poás Volcano continued to rumble and in 2017, it explosively erupted. Naturally, a team of researchers decided to revisit Laguna Caliente to see how the ongoing volcanic activity might have impacted the microbial community they identified in 2013, especially since volcanic eruptions had the potential to sterilize the lake.
The researchers took samples from the lake, sulfur clumps, and the sediment at the bottom of the lake, and subjected them to gene sequencing and metagenomic 'shotgun' sequencing to identify any organisms that might be lurking therein. Surprisingly, not only waswas the dominant species found inhabiting the lake, but all had significant survival adaptations.
"We expected a lot of the genes that we found, but we didn't expect this many given the lake's low biodiversity,"."This was quite a surprise, but it is absolutely elegant. It makes sense that this is how life would adapt to living in an active volcanic crater lake." Hydrothermal environments are of increasing interest to astrobiologists. The organisms that manage to thrive in these extreme places often don't rely on sunlight to survive, but harness chemical reactions to produce energy.
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Giant 'tree stump' impact crater spotted on MarsChelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea 'Foxanne' Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd and foxannemusic.
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