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First animals to live without oxygen discovered

BioMed Central ^ | Apr 7, 2010 | Unknown

Posted on by decimon

Deep under the Mediterranean Sea small animals have been discovered that live their entire lives without oxygen and surrounded by 'poisonous' sulphides. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology report the existence of multicellular organisms (new members of the group Loricifera), showing that they are alive, metabolically active, and apparently reproducing in spite of a complete absence of oxygen.

Roberto Danovaro, from the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy, worked with a team of researchers to retrieve sediment samples from a deep hypersaline anoxic basin (DHABs) of the Mediterranean Sea and studied them for signs of life. "These extreme environments", said Danovaro, "have been thought to be exclusively inhabited by viruses, Bacteria and Archaea. The bodies of multicellular animals have previously been discovered, but were thought to have sunk there from upper, oxygenated, waters. Our results indicate that the animals we recovered were alive. Some, in fact, also contained eggs". Electronmicroscopy shows that instead of aerobic mitochondria, these animals possess organelles resembling the hydrogenosomes found previously in unicellular organisms (protozoans) that inhabit anaerobic environments.

The implications of this finding may reach far beyond the darker parts of the Mediterranean Sea floor, according to Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In one of two commentaries accompanying this piece of research, she said, "The finding by Danovaro et al. offers the tantalizing promise of metazoan life in other anoxic settings, for example in the subsurface ocean beneath hydrothermal vents or subduction zones or in other anoxic basins". In the second commentary Marek Mentel and William Martin, from Comenius and Dusseldorf Universities look at the incidence of anaerobic mitochondria and hydrogenosomes in other organisms and focus on the evolutionary significance of the new findings. "The discovery of metazoan life in a permanently anoxic and sulfidic environment provides a glimpse of what a good part of Earth's past ecology might have been like in 'Canfield oceans', before the rise of deep marine oxygen levels and the appearance of the first large animals in the fossil record roughly 550-600 million years ago".

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Notes to Editors

1. The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions Roberto Danovaro, Antonio Dell'Anno, Antonio Pusceddu, Cristina Gambi, Iben Heiner and Reinhardt Mobjerg Kristensen BMC Biology 2010, 8:30 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-30

Article available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/30/abstract

Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.

2. The commentary by Lisa Levin is available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/31/abstract

The commentary by Mentel and Martin is available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/32/abstract

3. BMC Biology - the flagship biology journal of the BMC series - publishes research and methodology articles of special importance and broad interest in any area of biology and biomedical sciences. BMC Biology (ISSN 1741-7007) is covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, BIOSIS, CAS, EMBASE, Scopus, Zoological Record, Thomson Reuters (ISI) and Google Scholar.

4. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.



TOPICS:

History

Science

KEYWORDS:

anaerobic

biology

cryptobiology

evolution

godsgravesglyphs

science

xplanets





To: SunkenCiv

CompSci ping.



To: decimon

Seems like an interesting issue for evolution: "I don't have any use for oxygen, but my progeny will die without it." I'm having a hard time seeing how this would evolve via incremental steps.



by 3 posted onby ClearCase_guy (We're all heading for red revolution -- we just disagree on what the red really means.)

To: decimon

No pictures of Helen Thomas, please!



To: decimon

Loricifera, Lichtmikroskopische Aufnahme



by 5 posted onby JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)

To: decimon

WOW.



by 6 posted onby Centurion2000 (Something is seriously wrong when the .gov plans to treat citizens worse than they treat terrorists)

To: decimon

bump



To: JoeProBono

Lichtmikroskopische Aufnahme Not a good pick-up line.



To: decimon

That depends on the bar... And the hour...



by 9 posted onby Haiku Guy (Gov. Chris Christie (R) won the NJ-6 held by Rep. Frank Pallone (D) by a 15.5% margin!)

To: Centurion2000

ability to survive without oxygen nothing new...



by 10 posted onby mbarker12474 (If thine enemy offend thee, give his childe a drum.)

To: ClearCase_guy

Simultaneously having multiple energy cycles, would be evolutionarily beneficial. It could have started out that way.



To: decimon

"animals have been discovered that live their entire lives without oxygen and surrounded by 'poisonous' sulphides"



Big deal - George Soros has been doing it for years and thriving.



by 12 posted onby RightGeek (FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)

To: decimon

Oxides in their food sources, used by a special breakdown process?



by 13 posted onby JimRed (To water the Tree of Liberty is to excise a cancer before it kills us. TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)

To: JimRed

Oxides in their food sources, used by a special breakdown process? Dunno. It says that they live their entire lives without oxygen but I don't know if that's to be taken literally.



To: decimon; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 240B; 24Karet; ...

by 15 posted onby SunkenCiv ("Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others." -- Otto von Bismarck)

To: KevinDavis; annie laurie; garbageseeker; Knitting A Conundrum; Viking2002; Ernest_at_the_Beach; ...

by 16 posted onby SunkenCiv ("Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others." -- Otto von Bismarck)

To: ClearCase_guy

Try this:

Several unicellular organisms (prokaryotes and protozoa) can live under permanently anoxic conditions. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/30/abstract



To: SunkenCiv

More possibilities....now to check Mars.



To: decimon

Can’t be literal. Unless they have no DNA and are like those rock things on Star Trek. De-OXY-ribonucleic acid. So they must mean they actually have oxygen in them, but for them it’s more like a mineral. Like calcium is for us. But their respiration is based on H2S.



To: djf; JimRed

Cant be literal. Unless they have no DNA and are like those rock things on Star Trek. De-OXY-ribonucleic acid. So they must mean they actually have oxygen in them, but for them its more like a mineral. Like calcium is for us. But their respiration is based on H2S. Well...that sounds good.



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