A new Tree of Life; getting bushier and more complex (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 23, 2015, 15:27 (3440 days ago) @ David Turell

More information on a new group of bacteria, unknown until recently, which can metabolize uranium:-http://phys.org/news/2015-06-subsurface-discovery-tree-life.html-"Last week a study published in Nature pulled the veil on a branch of the bacterial tree of life that has evaded detection for nearly a century and a half. The study, led by Christopher Brown, who is a PhD candidate in microbial biology at the University of California in Berkeley, used cutting edge genome sequencing and savvy bioinformatics techniques to make this remarkable discovery.-"It all started at an abandoned uranium milling site on the banks of the Colorado River in a town called Rifle. This location, contaminated with toxic byproducts of uranium milling, has been a test ground for researchers experimenting on how microbes can be harnessed to bioremediate or clean the environment.-"Previously, researchers found that when naturally occurring microbes were supplied with a food source—the simple carbon compound acetate—a fortuitous biochemical reaction ensued. When stimulated to grow, a certain group of bacteria utilized the soluble uranium present in the soil and converted it to an insoluble form. Once insoluble, the uranium would be less apt to flow through groundwater and into the adjacent Colorado River.-"These bacteria cannot be grown in lab cultures. To further complicate things, it is predicted that between 50-100 percent of bacteria in some of the groups they discovered would be completely missed using the standard molecular techniques.-"Currently the tree of life is divided into three kingdoms. Bacteria and Archaea are two branches, each composed solely of unicellular organisms. The third kingdom is Eukarya, which encompasses all multicellular life forms and some unicellular microbes as well.-"The finding of this paper "represents a substantial modification of the tree of life," corresponding author Jill Banfield said in a statement. "These new major features on the tree of life mean that it probably won't be the simple three-domain view we have now," Banfield said."