Hydrothermal vents are seeps on the sea floor from which hot liquids escape. “Water penetrates into the ocean floor where it is heated by magma. The overheated water then rises […]
Past and present habitability of Mars have been intensely studied in the context of the search for signals of life. Despite the harsh conditions observed today on the planet, some […]
Every spring when the sun rises in the Arctic after months of darkness, life returns. The polar bears pop up from their winter lairs, the arctic tern soar back from […]
Evidence from the International Space Station suggests microbial populations are rapidly adapting to the spacecraft environment; however, the mechanism of this adaptation is not understood. Bacteriophages are prolific mediators of […]
Cells are the fundamental units of life, forming the variety of all living things on Earth as individual cells and multi-cellular organisms. To better understand how cells perform the essential […]
Freshwater resources are limited, accounting for only 3.5% of Earth’s water, with just 0.25% accessible on the surface. Nevertheless, freshwater lakes are essential for ecosystem functioning and global carbon cycling […]
Subsurface environments constitute one of Earth’s largest habitats for microbial life, yet differences between surface and subsurface microbiomes and between marine and terrestrial microbiomes remain unclear.
In a new scientific paper funded by an Ames Space Biology grant, Principal Investigator Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory strains of the bacterial species Enterobacter bugandensis isolated […]
A nitrogen-fixing bacterial endosymbiont of marine algae is evolving into a nitrogen-fixing organelle, or nitroplast, according to a new study, thereby expanding a function that was thought to be exclusively […]
With more than 5,500 detected exoplanets, the search for life is entering a new era. Using life on Earth as our guide, we look beyond green landscapes to expand our […]
