A bacterium collected from Yellowstone National Park is able to perform both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism simultaneously, despite the fact that oxygen inhibits the anaerobic process.
When the researchers added oxygen back into the mix, the bacteria grew faster; however, they also still produced the gas hydrogen sulfide, a product of anaerobic respiration.
The team speculates that the bacterium has a hybrid metabolism that enables it to grow in changing conditions where oxygen isn’t always present.
Courtney Stairs, an evolutionary biologist at Lund University in Sweden, said that the findings show “how much we still have to learn about microbial diversity and metabolism.”
As well as giving insight into how life adapted to the arrival of oxygen billions of years ago.
