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Photosynthesis "without light?

By Lionel Perez Valenzuela

The first discovery

exploration funds abyssal sea from 200 meters to the Great Plains to 4000-6000 m depth revealed thousands of new species. At these depths, where there is no light, the pressures are enormous and water only reaches 2 ° C was thought that fauna would consist almost exclusively of scavengers and heterotrophic bacteria.

After thirty years, discovered the hydrothermal vents (also called oceanic vents). A completely new ecosystem that depended for its survival in sunlight. Around these hydrothermal vents, or fumaroles (where emerging streams of up to 400 º C, very rich in minerals), flourishing community with a variety of species (more than 300 different species have been discovered to date). This ecosystem depends bacteria and archaea, chemoautotrophic. Engage in a process called chemosynthesis, in which molecules such as hydrogen sulfide will serve as an energy source to reduce CO2 and synthesize biomolecules. These

Bacteria are the main food source of all other surrounding agencies. Some of the organisms in the ocean recesses feed on bacteria to absorb energy, but also tube worms, which feed on a less conventional. They have no gut or digestive system but are embedded in their tissues billions of live bacteria (per gram of worm contains 10 billion bacteria) that meet their metabolic needs. In turn, the worms brings to those bacterial colonies around the hydrogen sulfide they need.

However this may not be the only autotrophic type of ecosystem. Recently, it has been discovered that in addition of chemoautotrophic bacteria and archaea, are photosynthetic bacteria that use infrared radiation emanating from hydrothermal vents.

Light in the depths

Every body with a temperature above absolute zero emits electromagnetic radiation such as infrared rays, which are invisible to our eyes. As a body is heated, it begins to emit more radiation and wavelength shorter. This can be seen with a heated metal filament, that increasing the temperature is turning red, then orange and finally white, emitting visible light.

The hydrothermal springs to be warmer than the surrounding cold water, emit infrared radiation that certain bacteria and animals could detect and exploit.

During the first years following the discovery of the vents, it was found that infrared radiation has any biological function. After evidence emerged that certain shrimp and crabs blind, have pigments that do not allow images but it serves to detect extremely faint amounts of light, perhaps to avoid close or too far away from the hydrothermal springs. Only source of nutrients from the desolate sea floor.

Researchers, before this discovery was immediately asked if this light so dim, close to red, could keep some type of photosynthetic organism. It seemed a preposterous assumption: photosynthesis in the deep sea! But this assumption had its foundations since shortly before had found green sulfur bacteria living in oxygen-poor water and made photosynthesis in water deep and almost devoid of light in the Black Sea.

Bacteria champions green sulfur photosynthesis

These bacteria possess bacteriochlorophyll Black Sea and photosynthesis can make more than 100 meters deep (where the light comes highly filtered) and darkness reigns. In this situation a bacteriochlorophyll molecule captures a photon every eight hours, so bacteria must take stock of light extremely efficiently. It is also the only way we can survive because they have no alternative metabolism (other bacteria can cause fermentation and if conditions allow photosynthesis can do to accelerate their growth), but this is not the case of green sulfur bacteria, depend exclusively on photosynthesis.

therefore the best candidate to find a photosynthetic bacteria in extreme conditions without sunlight and hydrothermal vents are green sulfur bacteria and some bacteria associated with them.

Eureka!

Thus, the group led by Robert Blankenship, a photosynthesis expert at the University Arizona State, had to convince the Department of the NASA Astrobiology of photosynthetic bacteria find thousands of meters deep in the most absolute darkness. The intensities of light measures at hydrothermal vents are a hundred to one million times fainter than the measures in the Black Sea. But against all odds, the researchers discovered a new species of photosynthetic bacteria in the samples from the hydrothermal vents off the coast of Costa Rica in the Pacific Ocean.

chlorosomes What are?

How is it possible that bacteria can do photosynthesis such low light intensities, the radiation from geothermal vents?

The answer lies in the chlorosomes, oblong vesicles located beneath the plasma membrane, containing the antenna pigments of green photosynthetic bacteria. Are arranged under the cytoplasmic membrane, without being in continuity with it, although in many cases are connected through a stalk of lipid nature.

chlorosomes These trapped photons channeled into the biosynthetic machinery necessary to transform light energy into chemical energy , so we can synthesize biomolecules.

Conclusions and future work

remains even identify this new species of green sulfur bacteria, this will require improved methods of identification (eg identification of photosynthetic pigments) , cultivation and sequencing of the PCR technique of nucleic acids, found in hydrothermal water samples.

From a historical perspective we can see these works have changed the vision we had of life on earth. Now we can find ecosystems independent of sunlight, bacteria living on the ground thousands of feet deep or hot springs, salt crystals in the mines or on frozen lakes in Antarctica. The beings are remarkably resilient and adaptable, that is a lesson we have learned.

These discoveries have not only improved our understanding of life on our planet, but have expanded the habitats where there could be alien life, from the cold deserts of Mars, the surface oceans Europe (one of the moons of Jupiter) to methane clouds on Titan (a moon of Saturn ), could all be good candidates to discover that there is life beyond our planet.