dimethylsulfide – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

CU-Boulder-led Team Finds Microbes in Extreme Environment on South American Volcanoes

By Guest PostJune 13, 2012Scienceandrew king, archaea, atacama mountain, atacama region, bacteria, carbon monoxide, chemical reaction, chile argentina border, desert, dimethylsulfide, dna analysis, extreme environment, fluorescent techniques, fungal ecosystems, fungi, glacier retreats, high altitude, maria farias, martian like landscape, metabolism, microbes, mountain area, organisms, peruvian andes, photosynthesis, rocky soils, ryan lynch, south america, steve schmidt, temperature fluctuation, ultraviolet radiation, university of colorado, volcan llullaillaco, volcan socompa, volcanoes

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for organisms that eke out a living in some of the most inhospitable soils on Earth has found a hardy few.

A new DNA analysis of rocky soils in the Martian-like landscape on some volcanoes in South America has revealed a handful of bacteria, fungi and other rudimentary organisms called archaea, which seem to have a different way of converting energy than their cousins elsewhere in the world.

“We haven’t formally identified or characterized the species,” said Ryan Lynch, a CU-Boulder doctoral student involved in the study. “But these are very different than anything else that has been cultured. Genetically, they’re at least 5 percent different than anything else in the DNA database of 2.5 million sequences.” (more…)

UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism

By Guest PostMay 16, 2012Scienceatmosphere, dimethylsulfide, dimethylsulfide emission, dimethylsulfoniopropionate, earth, gaia hypothesis, gaia theory, geochemist, harry oduro, isotopic composition, james farquhar, james lovelock, kathryn van alstyne, key, living organism, lynn margulis, ocean, oxidation, sulfur compound, sulfur cycle, umd finding, university of maryland, western washington university

Discovery ultimately could lead to better climate understanding and prediction

COLLEGE PARK, Md. Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land — interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.

One of the early predictions of this hypothesis was that there should be a sulfur compound made by organisms in the oceans that was stable enough against oxidation in water to allow its transfer to the air. Either the sulfur compound itself, or its atmospheric oxidation product, would have to return sulfur from the sea to the land surfaces. The most likely candidate for this role was deemed to be dimethylsulfide. (more…)

Tag Archives: dimethylsulfide

CU-Boulder-led Team Finds Microbes in Extreme Environment on South American Volcanoes

UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism