5 ms·
I had a microbiologist friend who said: "If you can name something, there's a bacterium that will eat it".
by cptvideo 6y ago
I had a microbiologist friend who said: "If you can name something, there's a bacterium that will eat it".
- Uehreka 6y agoSounds like a fun HN comment game, let’s go: Formaldehyde.
- oseibonsu 6y agoR. sphaeroides https://news.wisc.edu/microbe-eats-formaldehyde/#:~:text=Enter%20R.,for%20more%20than%20two%20decades https://news.wisc.edu/microbe-eats-formaldehyde/#:~:text=Ent....
- Uehreka 6y agoOh nice. Let’s kick it up a notch: Chlorine Trifluoride.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoProbably one of the chlorine-breathing microbes. Of course, the hard part is discovering the exact microbe that eats a given compound and publishing/finding an exact paper on it, not naming compounds. Which input sha256s into d4667a67e71436947c7ff89f31379aeb82d2044f74dbad776941fcd91585e318?3
- Uehreka 6y agoI feel like the hardest part would be convincing Chlorine Trifluoride to exist long enough for something to eat it, this one may be unfair. My last request for the night: Enriched Uranium.
- boilerupnc 6y agoGeobacter, Geothrix and Dyella species, as well as a novel—potentially predatory—Bacteroidetes species, and a new member of class Anaerolineae (Chloroflexi). Additionally, a population of methanogenic Methanocella species. [0] [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29128951/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29128951/
- johnchristopher 6y agoWhat happens to radiation when they eat it ? Does it go into excretions or does it get incorporated into the bacteria ? (or both ?)
- ars 6y agoRadiation is not a thing with an independent existence. Rather, when uranium decays, it emits radiation. (That radiation is in the form of some kind of particle, that particle of course does have an independent existence. I explain a bit more at the end.) When the bacteria eat the uranium, what it's really doing is oxidizing it (burning it if you will), and the excreting it. That uranium oxide is then just sitting there. It might then decay, and if it does it will emit the radiation. The process of being eating, and/or oxidized changes nothing whatsoever about the uranium decaying, it will do so, at a random, unpredictable time, and nothing you can do to it will speed that up or slow it down. A bit more about radiation: When uranium decays it can emit various thing, those things are collectively called "radiation". Those things also exist on their own (created in other ways), and when they do they get a new name. So radiation can be thought of as "the process of emitting something, while an atom decays", it's a process, not a thing in and of itself. i.e. since it's not a thing, it can't be incorporated into the bacteria in the way you are asking. Most of the emitted radiation is traveling way too fast to be incorporated into the bacteria, it will travel until it crashes into something, damaging that thing in the process (that's what makes it dangerous). Sometimes (it varies) the exact same particle, not traveling fast, can be useful and/or harmless. Does that make sense? If not feel free to ask more.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
- zeepzeep 6y ago> Which input sha256s into d4667a67e71436947c7ff89f31379aeb82d2044f74dbad776941fcd91585e318 you found me
- maze-le 6y agoHow about: Hydrogen fluoride. I know there are acidophiles but a concentrated HF solution in water has a H0 of up to -11, surely no membrane (made of proteins) can survive that?
- dekhn 6y agoDunno about HF specifically but there are bacteria living at extremely low pH in highly concentrated acids from mine runoff at Iron Mountain Mine.
- ars 6y agoPolyethylene.
- tremon 6y agoThey don't identify the bacterium in the article, but waxworm guts contain them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2020/03/09/mysterious-worms-eat-plastic-and-poop-alcohol/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2020/03/09/mysterious-... Pseudomonas bacteria can break down polyurethane, which is a tougher material than polyethylene: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/03/28/scientists-find-bacteria-that-eats-plastic/ https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/03/28/scientists-find-ba...
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago[1} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_pseudofirmus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_pseudofirmus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Bobbcatt 6y agonitrogen gas
- rishav_sharan 6y agoAqua Rezia
- ArnoVW 6y agoI guess you meant Aqua Regia? Not at all well versed in biology, but that seems less of a challenge than the other materials proposed (heavy metals, etc). Aqua Regia is a mixture of Nitric Acid and Hydrochloric Acid. At least the first seems easy enough to digest and obtain energy from. Yes, it is very acidic (ph 0 - 1) but so is your stomache (ph 1.5 - 3.5) and plenty of bacteria survive in that. Couldn't find a specific species on google though =)
- rishav_sharan 6y agoYep. misspelled it. ph is a logarithmic scale so the difference between ph ~0 and ph 3 is of 3 orders of magnitude (or something like that. My maths is rubbish...). it can dissolve noble metals so I doubt anything living can survive it. But once diluted, some extremophiles may be live off it. while googling found this interesting article https://onezero.medium.com/a-new-zealand-startup-is-using-microbes-to-suck-solid-gold-out-of-e-waste-48814d425eef https://onezero.medium.com/a-new-zealand-startup-is-using-mi... so yeah, the challenge is halfway broken. science is amazing. :D
- notriddle 6y agoThaumic radiation.
- neals 6y agoTrump
- jfoutz 6y agoNot a biologist. far outside of my expertise. Random human, there must be a zillion. E. Coli? I suspect, but do not know, there are tons of human eating bacteria.
- bboygravity 6y agoPure fluorine.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoTangentially related, mealworms have been studied and found to be able to eat a diet including polystyrene with no ill effects.
- benibela 6y agoneutrino
- zenexer 6y agoBlack holes. Not a bacterium, but there aren’t a whole lot of options here.
- quikoa 6y agoPerfluorooctanoic acid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#PFOA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#PFOA