New Scientist
Image: thdoubleu
For a few species of microbe, DNA is more than a library of genetic information: it’s also lunch. Some bacteria that live in the mud below the seafloor appear to survive by eating DNA trapped in the dirt.
“This is one of the yummiest things to eat down there,” says Gustavo Ramírez at the University of Southern California. “It’s got the major macronutrients that you get in your lawn fertiliser – carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.”
Biologists have already established that seafloor mud contains naked DNA – molecules no longer locked away inside biological cells. But the fact that this ‘extracellular’ DNA doesn’t build up into really substantial quantities suggests it must be recycled, says Kenneth Wasmund at the University of Vienna, Austria. That could be because some of the bacteria living in the mud break it down and reuse its components, he says. Read more on newscientist.com…
