The Unique Abilities of a Mysterious Life Form Promising to Aid Humanity in the Battle to Save Earth’s Environment.
A research team led by microbiologist Pok Man Leung from Monash University (Australia) has discovered that archaea – the third form of life on Earth – generates energy in a unique way previously thought impossible.
Archaea have been found in boiling water environments at Yellowstone National Park in the USA – (Photo: NATURE)
Archaea are referred to as the third form of life because they represent a distinct lineage, evolving along a completely different path than the other two forms of life: bacteria and eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes are organisms that possess complete cells with nuclei, which include all animals and plants on Earth. Of course, we are also eukaryotes.
In contrast, archaea are unicellular organisms that lack internal membrane-bound structures.
Most archaea are primarily known through the genetic sequences found in the extreme environments they inhabit, and many species have not yet been cultured in laboratories due to the difficulty of doing so.
Dr. Leung and his colleagues discovered at least nine phyla of archaea that produce hydrogen using enzymes previously thought to exist only in the other two forms of life.
This hydrogen serves as their lifeline, allowing many archaea to survive in Earth’s “death zones,” areas completely inhospitable to other forms of life.
Archaea have been found in extreme environments such as hot springs, dark underground caves, volcanoes, and deep-sea vents.
“Humans have only recently begun to consider using hydrogen as an energy source, but archaea have been doing this for billions of years,” Dr. Leung stated.
The new findings, presented in a publication in the journal Cell, hint to modern biotechnologists: We can harness these unusual archaea to produce completely “green” industrial hydrogen.
Additionally, this discovery helps scientists better understand the relationships between life forms in primitive Earth, through the types of enzymes that these life forms share; as well as the similarities and differences in how they have utilized these enzymes over billions of years of evolution.
