According to a new study published in Nature journal, microwave ovens used in homes, offices, and laboratories host thriving communities of microbes.
- The findings challenge the long-held belief that microwave radiation used to warm food completely kills bacteria, which can cause food-borne illnesses.
- Some bacteria found in domestic microwaves, such as Klebsiella, Enterococcus, and Aeromonas, may pose a risk to human health. S
Extremophiles
- Scientists have isolated microbes from volcanic vents, permafrost, acid mines, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and dark lakes buried kilometres under polar ice caps.
- Microbes have also been found thriving on the exteriors of spacecraft and around nuclear waste storage sites.
- Microbes that live in extreme natural conditions are called extremophiles. Many researchers believe that life began on the earth in an extreme environmental niche, in the form of an extremophile, before spreading and adapting to more temperate ecosystems.
- Microbes adapt to extreme environments by incorporating unique biological and biochemical processes.
- More complex life-forms like humans have evolved to have one set of proteins with which they navigate life.
- Extremophile microbes on the other hand have multiple sets of proteins, each customised for life in a specific environmental niche.
- Many global initiatives are currently trying to map, organise, and understand this diversity. One is the ambitious ‘Earth Microbiome Project’. It was founded in 2010 to sequence 200,000 genetic samples and assemble 500,000 microbial genomes.
- The ‘Earth Biogenome Project’ was launched to sequence the genomes of all of the planet’s eukaryotic organisms to create one of the largest and most comprehensive maps of organisms on the earth in a decade.
