Life that Lives On Uranium

Life in extreme environments – hot acids and heavy metals, for example – can apparently make very similar organisms deal with stress in very different ways, according to new research from North Carolina State University.

One single-celled organism from a hot spring near Mount Vesuvius in Italy fights uranium toxicity directly – by eating the heavy metal and acquiring energy from it. Another single-celled organism that lives on a “smoldering heap” near an abandoned uranium mine in Germany overcomes uranium toxicity indirectly – essentially shutting down its cellular processes to induce a type of cellular coma when toxic levels of uranium are present in its environment.