Sentences with phrase «microbial life as»

NASA decided to take a direct approach and look for evidence of microbial life as we understood it on Earth.

Not exact matches

If groundwater consistently fed these lakes, pools, and puddles, as rock formations hint, it's possible that microbial life could have taken shelter there.

Researchers also found the acidity created by the lactobacilli acts as a preservative even after being subjected to high heats during the baking process, resisting microbial deterioration and increasing the shelf life of products.

Just as living organisms are a microbial environment, so are non-living structures such as buildings.

It is thought that the initial microbial exposure is important in defining the successional trajectories leading to more complex and stable adult ecosystems (10, 22), and additionally, initial communities may serve as a direct source of protective or pathogenic bacteria very early in life.

As a few researchers had been arguing ever since microbial evolutionist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois first suggested it in the 1970s, archaea may look like bacteria, but they actually belong on a third branch of the tree of life.

Today, the team announced that they have the first evidence of microbial life in subglacial Antarctic waters, shown here just as the team's underwater camera reached the bottom of the lake.

This information guided Phoenix, the rover deployed before Curiosity, as it searched for microbial life on Mars.

Recent findings emphasize the importance of investigating members of the archaeal domain of life in order to obtain a more comprehensive view of microbial ecology, symbiosis, and metabolic interdependencies involving archaeal partners, and of evolution of life on Earth in regard to the deep roots of archaea as well as our microbial ancestry.

All told, the T - Limit team expects to detect traces of life as sparse as six microbial cells per cubic centimeter of sediment.

Fog's important role in sustaining microbial life drew McKay to the southern African desert, but the Namib also features some of the world's tallest sand dunes, rising as high as 1,000 feet.

The tripmark exhibit is still being finalized, but already this art - science project has been on display at two conferences as part of an effort to make the public more aware of soil microbial life.

Preventive vaccines work by introducing harmless microbial chemical markers, known as antigens, which resemble the markers on living microbes.

The existence of microbial life on Mars remains highly controversial, but recent evidence of water, complex organic molecules, and methane in the Martian environment, combined with findings from the 1976 Viking mission, have led to the conclusion that existing life on Mars is a possibility that must be considered, as presented in an article in Astrobiology.

Caves and skylights on Mars and the moon have recently attracted the attention of researchers keen on finding the best places to build extraterrestrial habitats (as well as those looking for extraterrestrial — likely microbial — life).

Understanding microbial life and the mineral breakdown that it incites under the ice sheet could help answer some momentous questions about whether global warming will speed up as Antarctica's ice recedes.

In this role, she works with many collaborators to facilitate implementing superresolution microscopy into their research programs as well as developing novel techniques for microbial live cell imaging.

The approach, called tunable infrared laser direct absorption spectroscopy, detects the ratio of methane isotopes, which can provide a «fingerprint» to differentiate between two common origins: microbial, in which microorganisms, typically living in wetlands or the guts of animals, produce methane as a metabolic byproduct; or thermogenic, in which organic matter, buried deep within the Earth, decays to methane at high temperatures.

Lake ice microbial communities, called LIMCOs as a counterpart to the already well described sea ice microbial communities (SIMCOs), are highly active and live within alternating layers of slush and white ice.

«The microbial world is one of the last frontiers of exploration on our planet, and we're using microscopes together with genomics to learn as much as possible about this invisible life.»

An unconventional solution is now presented by Singaporean and Chinese scientists: as reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they coated live, electroactive bacteria with a conducting polymer and obtained a high - performance anode for microbial fuel cells.

But unlike the Russian team, they hope to get answers on the presence of microbial life right away, Siegert says, as they'll be analyzing the contents of each bottle of lakewater as they get it.

Living bacteria such as these isolated from subseafloor sediments reveal a thriving ecology rather than a microbial graveyard.

The first traces of life appear in the fossil record around 3.5 billion years ago in the form of microbial mounds in Western Australia known as stromatolites.

Although the evidence was subsequently contested, some single - celled microbial life lacking a nucleus that segregates their internal DNA or RNA («prokaryotes») from the surrounding cytoplasm may have flourished in darkness within cracks in Earth's seafloor crust and around deep, warm or boiling hot ocean springs (hydrothermal or volcanic vents, such as at Lost City or at black smokers) without a need for light or free oxygen in the oceans or atmosphere.

Suddenly, it was possible to scan the overall composition of habitats as diverse as stagnant bogs and frozen tundra, producing a detailed portrait of the microbial life they held.

Despite comparatively intense bombardment by large impactors, chemical and radio - isotopic trace evidence of what appears to be biologically processed carbon in Earth's oldest surviving rocks — from western Greenland's Isua greenstone belt that are as old as 3.85 billion years — suggest that self - replicating, carbon - based microbial life became well developed during Earth's first billion years of existence.

This interface impacts areas as diverse as prolonging lithium - ion battery life, designing catalytic reactions that can convert biomass to biofuels, and extracellular electron transfer in microbial communities where bacteria catalyze electrode surfaces and shuttle electrons externally, as in a microbial fuel cell.

The frigid satellite has long been thought of as candidate for possible microbial life due to its vast subsurface ocean of water.

Analysis of that sample showed that early Mars offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including the key elemental ingredients for life and a chemical energy source such as used by some microbes on Earth.

says Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. «Did microbial life ever originate on Mars, and what happened to it as the planet changed?

The new findings indicate that «as long as 3.7 billion years ago microbial life was already diverse,» Nutman added.

The latest findings of microbial life flourishing in the extreme environment of subglacial Lake Whillans in Antarctica, which were detailed in the first part of this article, are further hinting at the possibility of life existing in a similar fashion as well in the mysterious, underground alien waters of Europa.

While no one can say with certainty what sort of life might be turned up by these experiments, the usual assumption is that it will be microbial, as single - celled life is adaptable to a wide range of environments and requires less energy.

Their data supports the view that as many as one hundred million planets scattered around the Milky Way, and perhaps more, could support life beyond the microbial stage.

The fossils discovered in these formations include stromatolites — layered rock structures created by communities of ancient microbes — and several other signatures of microbial life, such as a microbial palisade texture preserved in stone, and bubbles that were most likely trapped in a sticky substance produced by ancient bacteria.

This violent end is a precaution planned by scientists to prevent any potential contamination from the spacecraft spreading to Enceladus and Titan, which are seen as potential places that microbial life could have emerged.

A mission to explore the frozen north pole of Mars as part of the search for past, or even present, microbial life has been selected by NASA for launch in 2007.

But it's easy to forget that we live in a microbial environment as well and our home environment influences our health too.

Again quoting from the free encyclopedia, «Probiotics are live microorganisms that may confer a health benefit on the host... «live microbial feed supplement which beneficially affects the host animal by improving its intestinal microbial balance»... commonly consumed as part of fermented foods with specially added active live cultures.»

Among those species both small enough to, and living in a position from which they can, become airborne, are microbial leaf - surface pathogens such as Fusarium and lichens such as Cladonia.

Whether learning that I am only 10 % human, 90 % bacteria, or musing on the concept of composting as animal husbandry, my life has taken a decidedly microbial turn of late.