Extreme Survival News

June 3, 2025

Top Headlines

Nitrogen Loss on Sandy Shores: The Big Impact of Tiny Anoxic Pockets

June 2, 2025 — Some microbes living on sand grains use up all the oxygen around them. Their neighbors, left without oxygen, make the best of it: They use nitrate in the surrounding water for denitrification -- a process hardly possible when oxygen is present. This ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...

Study Discovers DNA Switch That Controls TB Growth, and Could Help Unlock Its Antibiotic Resistance Secrets

May 22, 2025 — The bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) may have an 'on-off switch' that lets them pause and restart growth, according to a new study. The research helps explain why TB is so hard to treat with ...

Yeast Reveals How Species Adapt to a Warmer Climate

May 21, 2025 — How do organisms adapt to climate change? A new study reveals the complex interplay between genetic diversity and temperature tolerance ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:49pm EDT

Loss of Sea Ice Alters the Colors of Light in the Ocean

May 2, 2025 — The disappearance of sea ice in polar regions due to global warming not only increases the amount of light entering the ocean, but also changes its color. These changes have far-reaching consequences ...

Biological Particles May Be Crucial for Inducing Heavy Rain

May 5, 2025 — Atmospheric and climate scientists show that biological particles may induce rain events that could contribute to flooding and snowstorms, owing to their ability to precipitate ice formation in ...

Artificial Oxygen Supply in Coastal Waters: A Hope With Risks

May 5, 2025 — Could the artificial introduction of oxygen revitalise dying coastal waters? While oxygenation approaches have already been proven successful in lakes, their potential side effects must be carefully ...

Electricity-Generating Bacteria May Power Future Innovations

May 1, 2025 — A team has discovered how certain bacteria breathe by generating electricity, using a natural process that pushes electrons into their surroundings instead of breathing on oxygen. The findings could ...

Geobiology: Iron, Sulfur, Heat -- And First Life

Apr. 30, 2025 — The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their ...

Hotter Temps Trigger Wetlands to Emit More Methane as Microbes Struggle to Keep Up

Apr. 23, 2025 — In the soils of Earth's wetlands, microbes are in a tug-of-war to produce and consume the powerful greenhouse gas methane. But if the Earth gets too ...

New Species of Electricity-Conducting Organism, Name It After Tribe

Apr. 22, 2025 — Scientists have identified a novel species of bacteria that acts as electrical wiring, potentially ushering in a new era of bioelectronic devices for use in medicine, industry, food safety, and ...

Microorganisms Employ a Secret Weapon During Metabolism

Apr. 16, 2025 — In the global carbon cycle microorganisms have evolved a variety of methods for fixing carbon. Researchers have investigated the methods that are utilized at extremely hot, acidic and sulfur-rich ...

Missing Nitrogen: A Dramatic Game of Cosmic Hide-and-Seek Deep Within Our Planet

Apr. 11, 2025 — Earth's rocky layers are mysteriously low in nitrogen compared with carbon and argon. A scientific team explored our planet's molten youth using ...

Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid: A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped

Apr. 8, 2025 — About 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the planet, wiping out all non-avian dinosaurs and about 70% of all marine species. But the ...

An Answer to Green Energy in Hydrogen-Generating Marine Microbes

Apr. 3, 2025 — A genomic study of hydrogen-producing bacteria has revealed entirely new gene clusters capable of producing large volumes of ...

Multi-Resistance in Bacteria Predicted by AI Model

Apr. 2, 2025 — An AI model trained on large amounts of genetic data can predict whether bacteria will become antibiotic-resistant. The new study shows that antibiotic resistance is more easily transmitted between ...

Scientists Solve 'Cocktail Party' Mystery of Bat Echolocation

Mar. 31, 2025 — Every night, bats emerge out of roosts in massive numbers, creating what scientists have called a 'cocktail party nightmare' of clashing echolocations. Nobody knew how bats managed this ...

Fluorescent Caves Could Explain How Life Persists in Extraterrestrial Environments

Mar. 25, 2025 — Deep below the Earth's surface, rock and mineral formations lay hidden with a secret brilliance. Under a black light, the chemicals fossilized within shine in brilliant hues of pink, blue and ...

The Evolution of Low-Temperature Adapted Enzymes

Mar. 25, 2025 — Enzymes originally evolved in high-temperature environments and later adapted to lower temperatures as Earth cooled. Scientists discovered that a key shift in enzyme function occurred over ...

Sulfur Bacteria Team Up to Break Down Substances in the Seabed

Mar. 19, 2025 — Scientists have decoded the metabolic strategies of certain sulfur bacteria. A new study reports that the bacteria are found worldwide and have a complex metabolism with modular ...

Scientists Discover Protein Key to Bacteria's Survival in Extreme Environments

Mar. 18, 2025 — The discovery sheds light on how certain bacteria -- including strains that cause food poisoning and anthrax -- form spores for ...

Signs of Alien Life May Be Hiding in These Gases

Mar. 12, 2025 — Scientists identify a new way to detect life in outer space with currently existing telescopes. The method hinges on worlds that look nothing like Earth, and gases rarely considered in the search for ...

Adaptability of Some Coral Reef Fish to Rising Temperatures

Mar. 6, 2025 — Researchers have found that reef fish from the Arabian Gulf, the world's hottest sea, exhibit a higher tolerance to temperature fluctuations compared to those from more thermally stable coral ...

Damaged but Not Defeated: Bacteria Use Nano-Spearguns to Retaliate Against Attacks

Mar. 5, 2025 — Some bacteria deploy tiny spearguns to retaliate against rival attacks. Researchers mimicked attacks by poking bacteria with an ultra-sharp tip. Using this approach, they have uncovered that bacteria ...

How a Low-Carb Diet Can Drive Colorectal Cancer Development

Mar. 3, 2025 — Researchers have shown how a low carbohydrate diet can worsen the DNA-damaging effects of some gut microbes to cause colorectal cancer. The study compared the effects of three different diets in ...

Reactive Nitrogen Species Dominance Is Key in the Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance

Feb. 27, 2025 — The balance between two types of molecules -- reactive nitrogen species (RNS) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) -- plays a crucial role in tackling drug-resistant bacteria, according to a new ...

Elucidating the Photosynthetic Mechanism of Purple Sulfur Bacteria Living in High-Salt, High-Alkaline Environments

Feb. 25, 2025 — Researchers have investigated the structure and light energy transfer efficiency of a protein complex crucial to the photosynthesis of purple sulfur bacteria thriving in high-salt, high-alkaline ...

Nitrogen Fixation on Marine Particles Is Important in the Global Ocean

Feb. 19, 2025 — Nitrogen is essential for all life on Earth. In the global oceans, however, this element is scarce, and nitrogen availability is therefore critical for the growth of marine life. Some bacteria found ...

Resilient Algae May Speed Up Greenland Ice Melt

Feb. 19, 2025 — New research reveals that ice algae can store nutrients which may enable them to colonize more of the ice sheet, darkening and melting ...

Marine Mystery Solved: How Anemonefish Avoid Stings from Their Sea Anemone Hosts

Feb. 14, 2025 — The clownfish-anemone living arrangement is one of the most widely recognized examples of symbiosis. Researchers have made a breakthrough in understanding how anemonefish can live safely among sea ...

Combining Millions of Years of Evolution With Tech Wizardry: The Cyborg Cockroach

Feb. 13, 2025 — A research team has developed two new autonomous navigation systems for cyborg insects to better navigate unknown, complex environments. The algorithms utilized only simple circuits that leveraged ...

Novel Bacteria Parasitizing Archaea

Feb. 10, 2025 — Researchers have succeeded in cultivating an ultra-small bacterial strain parasitizing archaea and classified it as new species and genus of Minisyncoccus ...

New Research on Ancient Life Found in Yellowstone Hot Springs

Feb. 3, 2025 — New work offers insight into how early life adapted from a low-oxygen atmosphere to the one that exists ...

Scientists Discover Unique Microbes in Amazonian Peatlands That Could Influence Climate Change

Jan. 24, 2025 — Researchers have identified an unknown family of microbes uniquely adapted to the waterlogged, low-oxygen conditions of tropical peatlands in Peru's northwestern Amazonian rainforest. The new ...