‘Fire amoeba’ can withstand record-breaking temperatures : NPR
Introducing Incendiamoeba cascadensis, which translates to “fire amoeba of the Cascade mountain range.” This single-celled organism can replicate at temperatures up to 145°F, a new record for a complex organism. Felix Mikus hide caption toggle caption Felix Mikus Angela Oliverio, a microbiologist at Syracuse University, studies the edge of what’s possible. “There’s a very deep curiosity and desire to understand life at its limits and at its most extreme,” she says. “And where that boundary is and what truly are our constraints.” It’s not unlike ultra-elite athletes who push themselves “to the absolute max of what we think is humanly possible,” she says. “But in this case, we’re just expanding it to life more generally” — specifically, microscopic life. Oliverio studies organisms called extremophiles, so named because they thrive in unusually harsh conditions, like high temperatures. The title holders in this regard are simple organisms like bacteria and a group called Archaea, with certain species living at or above 212°F, the boiling point of water. But Beryl Rappaport, a PhD student in Oliverio’s …
