New Delhi (NVI): Life exists in extreme environments on Earth, from arid deserts and frozen tundras to thermal toxic vents in the deepest reaches of the ocean floor. But it can’t exist on every inch of the planet and scientists have discovered a place in Ethiopia life can’t find a way, according to a new study.
In contrast with previous research, scientists conducted multiple tests and found that there is no life, not even microorganisms, in Dallol. One of the Earth’s most extreme environments, Dallol is incredibly hot, salty and acidic. Its ponds extend across a volcanic crator, in the Ethiopian Dakanil depression, filled with salt, toxic gases and boiling water in response to hydrothermal activity.
Even in winter, daytime temperatures can exceed 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of the hyper acidic and saline pools have negative pH values.
The findings published recently in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
After analysing many more samples than in previous works, with adequate controls so as not to contaminate them and a well-caliberated methodology , we have verified that there is no microbial life in these salty, hot and hyperacid pools, or in the adjacent magnesium-rich brine lakes, said Purification Lopez Garcia, study author and biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
However, outside the ponds, it’s a different story.
“What does exists is a great diversity of halophilic archaea (a type of primitive salt-loving microorganisms) in the desert and the saline canyons around the hypothermal site, but neither in the hyperacid and hypersaline pools themselves, nor in the so called Black and Yellow lakes of Dallol, where magnisium abounds, said Lopez Garcia. “And all this despite the fact that microbial dispersion in this area, due to the wind and human visitors, is intense.”
The researchers performed mass sequencing of genetic markers mean to find and classify any new micro-organisms that may be present, as well as the cultures to find microbes, cytometry for detecting individual cells, brine chemical analysis and electron microscopy combined with X-ray spectroscopy.
At first glance, minerals rich in silica may mimic microbial cells, the researchers said. But their analysis revealed the difference.
