Electric bacteria: the last alien discovery?

Discovering about alien biology (in the sense of being unusual and different from whatever else known thus far) is definitively hot these days. Just a month after the creation of DNA with two additional, human-made building blocs, scientists discover a startling new kind of bacteria. What’s so special about them? Simply put, they don’t eat food; they eat energy. More precisely, they take their energy from rocks and metal by feeding directly on their electrons.

All these bacteria can process and release energy in a series of different ways, leading scientists to believe they can grow them in different settings and even use them to manufacture batteries or some kind of artificial organisms.

Bacteria had previously been identified with some kind of ‘electrical’ properties, like the marine bacteria Shewanella and Geobacter, which can metabolise certain collections of chemicals, producing electrons in the process. These bacteria are known to create a variation of power cables, running electric currents through the seabed.

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

This discovery, adding in correlation to the recent ones, not only raises an entirely new set of questions about what constitutes life, but also changes the specs for what represents a habitat suitable for life itself. Unsurprisingly, NASA has equally expressed interest in this “dark energy biosphere,” due to the extreme conditions where some of these bacteria thrive could be replicated, for example, in the solar system. In the same way, environments previously considered hostile to life for lack of essential components will possibly be reconsidered, opening up new possibilities in the quest for alien life.

Photo Credit: Science Photo