utenzi

Okay. Maybe not everyone would react the same way, but a researcher at Penn is waxing quite eloquent about some bacteria he and a team of other researchers found recently in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. According to him, "Finding a previously unknown, chlorophyll-producing microbe is the discovery of a lifetime for someone who has studied bacterial photosynthesis for as long as I have." Bryant went on to elaborate, "I wouldn't have been as excited if I had reached into that mat and pulled out a gold nugget the size of my fist!" [The picture there to the left is from the Penn press release linked above. It illustrates where the bacterial mats are found] The discovery of the chlorophyll-producing bacterium, Candidatus Chloracidobacterium (Cab.) thermophilum , was described in the 27 July 2007 issue of the journal Science in a paper led by Don Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecula...