Life in space may not need oxygen to survive

The first multicellular organism known to live without ever taking its first breath has been found living completely free of oxygen inside salmon.

The parsasite, Henneguya salminicola, is a jellyfish-like organism that doesn’t have a mitochondrial genome, marking the first time such an absence has been discovered. The tiny creature excites scientists who are now rethinking how life in space on other worlds might exist.

Life started to develop the ability to breathe oxygen about 1.5 billion years ago. “Then a larger archaeon engulfed a smaller bacterium, and somehow the bacterium’s new home was beneficial to both parties, and the two stayed together,” Michelle Starr wrote in Science Alert. The same could be happening all over the galaxy.

“Our discovery confirms that adaptation to an anaerobic environment is not unique to single-celled eukaryotes, but has also evolved in a multicellular, parasitic animal,” the researchers wrote in their paper in PNAS.

“Hence, H. salminicola provides an opportunity for understanding the evolutionary transition from an aerobic to an exclusive anaerobic metabolism.”

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-the-first-known-animal-that-doesn-t-need-oxygen-to-survive

jamiehart

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