What is the habitat of thermoacidophiles?

Where do thermophilic bacteria live?

I would like to start by talking about you all.

How many of you are there out there using this site, how many of you really take the time to read our articles? And I'm not really asking for answer but rather to have it as an inspiration for my topic of the evening which is on bacterial respiration. Where do you think that bacteria live and how does that fit into our respiratory system? Well, let's take a look at the topic. Remember, the topic can be found on Wikipedia here.

And why am I talking about bacterial respiration? Because I was taught in my Biology classes that, according to theory of Evolution, microorganisms started from where we are right now (bacteria) so it is a given to try to infer what it was like at the first stage of Evolution. And it is the same thing here as it is with the rest of us. If we want to know about your respiration, we can go with it, go with the evolutionary tree and trace back as far as you want.

And that is exactly what you have to do. That is a lot of time and effort to go through. Some will say, OK let's talk about how you breathe. Yes, let's talk about that. Let's get into detail with it. But no, you cannot start from wherever you please. You have to start from the beginning and work your way up. Yes, let's talk about those micro-organisms living in an environment and finding that they need something or someone to help them survive. Yes, they need oxygen! Of course, oxygen is the common denominator. And you are breathing it in.

There is a simple idea behind that which I will try to outline but let me get it straight in the beginning so that I don't go off in the wrong direction. When I try to understand this idea of respiration it is vital for me to start from its origins. The origins of oxygen breathing come from an ocean that was covered in oxygen for billions of years because of the slow accumulation of small amounts of oxygen. This process began when there were small organisms, one of them being a species of micro-organism, and that would not be able to cope with the very high amount of oxygen.

What is the habitat of thermoacidophiles?

Thermoacidophiles, or acidophiles, are organisms that thrive at extreme temperatures and at acidic conditions.

Thermoacidophiles grow best at extremely low temperaturessuch as 4C (39F) to 60C (140F). When thermoacidophiles grow at the lower temperatures, they use an energy source, such as the organic compound acetate, to power metabolic processes. Thermoacidophiles gain energy from ATP, an ion that is involved in metabolism. ATP provides energy for cell growth by helping cells divide and metabolize the nutrients in food. Thermoacidophiles obtain their energy by metabolizing ATP in the presence of acidophilic bacteria. These bacteria are called acetogens, and they produce CO2 and H2. Thermoacidophiles are found everywhere on Earth, except Antarctica.

At very low temperatures, the thermodynamic state of ATP (free energy) is high, but the Gibbs free energy is low because the enzyme is activated to a higher state. The enzyme will activate itself to a higher state, but the process won't go any further because the free energy will increase too much for the enzyme. Because of this, an increase in temperature will make the ATPase to go to its high-energy state. Thermoacidophiles have a high growth temperature of 70C to 105C (158F to 212F).

At temperatures above 40C (104F), the Gibbs free energy is high, making it thermodynamically unfavorable to hydrolyze ATP. As the temperature continues to rise, there is no change in Gibbs free energy, leading to the idea of a stable state. In the stable state, the enzyme maintains its position on the membrane to hydrolyze ATP. Thermophilic organisms have a high temperature growth rate of 100C to 105C (212F to 212F). Thermophiles usually use enzymes such as heat-stable ATPases and DNA polymerases. The maximum temperatures of growth for thermoacidophiles is 105C and for thermophiles is 212F.

At pH values below 2, the ionization of acidic amino acids decreases, increasing the Gibbs free energy for hydrogen bonds in biological molecules. This is the condition under which the enzyme exists, even at higher temperatures.

Which is the most probably the habitat of thermophiles?

I know that a few bacteria and archaea can live in hot conditions, and that they tend to be very energy-hungry.

(E. Coli survives when food is scarce because of its use of fermentation.) So I am wondering, what are the most probable habitats of thermophiles? There are numerous places in the earth which are far from the sun, but the temperature is hot. Should we think of life on those planets in these terms? What type of habitats might be most likely for a hyperthermophile? Would a hot geyser be the best way to get into the hot part of the world for a living?

I think you can rule out any sort of geothermal systems, so forget about those. The usual habitat of hyperthermophiles is deep oceanic thermal vents. You seem to want to think of life in terms of what's the most likely to live there, and I'd agree with your assumption that it's the life that's most likely to have adapted to a certain environment. But it's important to note that as soon as we say "life", we're assuming we're talking about life the way it's talked about in evolutionary biology.

So let's take a step back. What does biology say about why there should be life at all? It seems fairly plausible that it will occur wherever any of the chemicals necessary for life are present. The Earth has plenty of those chemicals water, iron, methane, carbon dioxide. That suggests that life might be able to form anywhere that those chemicals are present. Then why don't we find any evidence for it on the surfaces of the moon, Mars, or Venus? For whatever reason, the chemical conditions for life are just not present on the surface of the Sun's habitable zone.

So what do the physical conditions on Earth look like? If you had some way of taking a long, slow, extremely detailed measurement of the chemical composition of the surface layer of the oceans, and that layer were to go from very hot down to very cold, and it went through the chemical composition of the layers of rock in between, you'd get a pretty clear picture of what it looks like on the surface. What do we know about what that surface layer is like?