Background The extreme environment of the International Space Station (ISS) puts selective pressure on microorganisms unintentionally introduced during its 20+ years of service as a low-orbit science platform and human […]
Phosphorus is an essential building block of the most prominent biomolecules, such as polynucleic acids, and has likely played that role since the beginning of life. Despite this importance for […]
During the 70-million-year span of the Cryogenian Snowball Earth glaciations, low ocean temperatures beneath global sea ice increased water viscosity up to fourfold.
The dominant organisms in modern oxic ecosystems rely on respiratory quinones with high redox potential (HPQs) for electron transport in aerobic respiration and photosynthesis.
Space agencies and private companies strive for a permanent human presence on the Moon and ultimately on Mars. Bioprocesses have been advocated as key enablers due to their ability to […]
Urea is hypothesized to be an important source of nitrogen and chemical energy to microorganisms in the deep sea; however, direct evidence for urea use below the epipelagic ocean is […]
![Rubisco form II structural differences between T. arctica UC1 and H. marinus. A) AlphaFold-generated [51,52] structures for H. marinus (transparent white) and T. arctica UC1 RbcII (dark blue) dimers aligned with ChimeraX [53]. Active sites colored red. Arrows point to the additional exposed active site residues in UC1 compared to H. marinus. The missing residues in UC1 at amino acid positions 78–82 (Fig. 4) are colored yellow on H. marinus structure (close44 up view in B). C) UC1 form II dimer with residue differences to H. marinus that confer a semi45 conservative or non-conservative change highlighted in orange.-- biorxiv.org](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Prevalence-of-the-Calvin.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
The act of fixing inorganic carbon into the biosphere is largely facilitated by one enzyme, Rubisco. Beyond well-studied plants and cyanobacteria, many bacteria use Rubisco for chemolithoautotrophy in extreme environments […]
Tardigrades are small metazoans renowned for their exceptional tolerance against various harsh environments in a dehydrated state. Some species exhibited an extraordinary tolerance against high-dose irradiation even in a hydrated […]
The atmosphere hosts a microbiome that connects remote ecosystems but remains underexplored. In this study, we employed metagenomics to examine the ecological roles of the atmospheric microbiome, including the dispersal […]
The fascination with space and human spaceflight has significantly increased in recent years. Nevertheless, microgravity has a significant impact on humans. Immune and red blood cells utilize hematic or lymphatic […]
