Extreme extremophiles: living in very low light (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 10, 2025, 17:21 (4 days ago) @ David Turell

In the arctic on a few photons:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZTgQDhBLlRLGlJkdpKJCZBbrL

"Plants don’t have eyes, but they clearly sense light, twirling and bending to expose their leaves to as much of it as possible — a trick known as phototropism. But how plants can sense the direction light is coming from, and react to it, remained largely mysterious until recently, when a group of scientists discovered part of the secret, at least for a roadside weed often studied as a model plant. Thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, has stems built of cells — and in between those cells are pockets of air. Because of the way these air pockets scatter light, they create a light gradient that the seedlings follow to grow toward the brightest sunlight.

"Sometimes light is hard to come by, especially for cells living in dark polar waters in the dead of winter. Biologists recently used microalgae to confirm how many photons, or light particles, are needed to kick-start photosynthesis. Previously, theoretical calculations suggested that cells need, at minimum, around 0.01 micromoles of photons per square meter per second — or less than one-hundred-thousandth of the light of a sunny day — to power the reactions that turn light into food. Working in the months-long polar night, the researchers discovered that microalgae can grow and reproduce at or around these levels — the first experimental proof that neared the theoretical numbers."

Comment: taken from a long article on sunlight. Life scrambles by. It is as if matter prefers to live. I think it was designed that way.