Bacteria found in asteroid sample – but they're not from space

 

Image courtesy of Matthew J. Genge et al. 2024

Joel Kontinen

The unexpected discovery of microbial life in a piece of rock from an asteroid show how hard it is to avoid contaminating samples. It was brought back on a sample from the Ryugu asteroid.

So the bacteria was probably produced on Earth, which speaks of contamination. As only God can create living things.

A rock from the asteroid Ryugu that was brought back to Earth appears to be festooned with microbial life. But these microbes almost certainly came from Earth rather than outer space, say researchers. This contamination serves as a cautionary tale in the search for extraterrestrial life in future sample return missions, such as from NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars.

In 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft returned to Earth with 5.4 grams of rock from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Ryugu. After the sample capsule landed in Australia, it was transported to a custom-built facility in Sagamihara, Japan. There, the capsule was first opened inside a vacuum room, itself located within a clean room, before moving to a pressurised nitrogen-filled room for longer-term storage. From there, parts of the sample could be put inside nitrogen-filled containers and sent out for researchers to study.

One of these samples was sent to the UK to be studied by Matthew Genge at Imperial College London and his colleagues. Genge and his team initially scanned the sample using X-rays, which showed no evidence of bacteria.

The millions of years is not based on science.

Source: 

Alex Wilkins 2024 Bacteria found in asteroid sample – but they're not from space | New Scientist22 November

Old Mutations drive evolution?

 

Image courtesy of Science Photo Library / Alamy

Joel Kontinen

 

Bacteria can teach us whether  evolutions is true or not. Recently, resrarchers found out that after “2,000 generations, with bacteria suggests existing variation makes a smaller contribution to evolution than they had thought.”

Now, new mutations in evolution “quickly won out” and all due to new mutations due to new mutations and all further evolution was, says Minako Izutsu at Michigan State University.,

Source:

 Le Page, Michael. 2022. Bacteria bred for 2000 generations settle long-term evolution mystery New scientist 14 June

Bacteria Still Uses Same Password for Making Spores

Bacilli still used the same password for making spores. Image courtesy of Y tambe, CC BY-SA 3.0.



Joel Kontinen

Evolution is still not happening.

“When it comes to changing their passwords, bacteria are just as bad as you and me — maybe even worse. A Carnegie Mellon University research team has found that despite 2.7 billion years of evolution, bacteria are still using the same “password” to initiate the process for making spores. Their findings were published in the September issue of PLOS Genetics.”

Astrobiology Magazine had this to say on the issue:

“The Carnegie Mellon researchers, led by the Department of Biological Sciences’ Dannie Durand, used computational and experimental techniques to study how the signaling network that causes Bacilli and Clostridia to form spores has evolved since the two bacteria diverged from a common ancestor 2.7 billion years ago.”

Bacteria are very lazy to not to have evolved over more than 2 billion years. Here a list on what animals have desisted Darwin for so long.

Source:

Bacteria’s password for sporulation hasn’t changed in 2.7 billion years hasn’t changed to way they make spores. 27 September 2018. Astrobiology Magazine.

Engineered Systems in E. Coli Bacteria

E. coli. Image courtesy of Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH. A letter in Nature suggests that the bacterium is even more complex than previously thought.





Joel Kontinen


Bacteria are anything but simple. A recent letter in the journal Nature discusses the overflow system in Escherichia coli and states:

“In bacterial cells, the overproduction of metabolites is normally avoided by mechanisms that are similar in principle to control systems in engineering.”

As far as we know, blind Darwinian processes are incapable of engineering feats. But there’s more:

“We all know that a kitchen sink is liable to overflow if the tap is left on with the plughole blocked. In most domestic sinks this danger is averted, at least partially, by having an overflow outlet near the top. But in more elaborate engineered systems, such as the domestic toilet, an overflow is avoided by means of negative feedback: as soon as the water in the tank reaches a certain level, the inflow is switched off. Bacterial metabolism is in many ways similar.”

Somehow, this sounds like a very intelligently designed system.

Source:

Cornish-Bowden, Athel. 2013. Biochemistry: Curbing the excesses of low demand. Nature 500 (7461), 157–158.

Wired Science: Simple Organisms Do Not Exist

E. coli. Image courtesy of Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH. A fresh study indicates that bacteria are more complex than previous thought.




Joel Kontinen

Unicellular organisms can be astonishingly complex, a new study conducted at the University of Arizona reveals. Although Mycoplasma pneumoniae only has a fifth of the genes of Escherichia coli, it is by no means simple.

Howard Ochman and Rahul Raghavan, biologists at the University of Arizona, recently published a paper on M. pneumoniae in Science. They documented almost all proteins that M. pneumoniae uses, studied the function of each gene and recorded their gene activity.

M. pneumoniae has only eight gene switches (E. coli has 50), but they are able to control its molecular activities. This suggests amazingly sophisticated co-operation.

In other words, stupid bacteria are surprisingly clever.

Charles Darwin assumed that the cell was exceedingly simple. However, recent biochemical discoveries have shown that the cell is more of a conglomeration of well-designed nano factories than a Darwinian black box.

Rather than being noise, the message that these humble bacteria are trying to communicate clearly speaks of extremely intelligent design.

If only we had ears that could hear.



Source:

Keim. Brandon. 2009. There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism. Wired Science. (30 November). http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/basics-of-life/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Fscience+(Wired%3A+Science)