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Are microorganisms everywhere they can be?
Environmental Microbiology ( IF 5.1 ) Pub Date : 2021-10-24 , DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.15825
Charles S Cockell 1
Affiliation  

Baas-Becking is famously attributed with the conjecture that ‘everything is everywhere, but the environment selects’. Although this aphorism is largely challenged by microbial biogeographical data, even weak versions of the claim leave unanswered the question about whether all environments that could theoretically support life contain life. In the last decade, the discovery of thermally sterilized habitable environments disconnected from inhabited regions, and habitats within organisms such as the sterile, but habitable human fetal gut, suggest the existence of a diversity of macroscopic habitable environments apparently devoid of actively metabolizing or reproducing life. Less clear is the status of such environments at the micron scale, for example, between colonies of organisms within rock interstices or on and within other substrates. I discuss recent evidence for these types of environments. These environments have practical uses in: (i) being negative controls for understanding the role of microbial processes in geochemical cycles and geological processes, (ii) yielding insights into the extent to which the biosphere extends into all spaces it theoretically can, (iii) suggesting caution in interpreting the results of life detection instrumentation, and (iv) being useful for establishing the conditions for the origin of life and its prevalence on other planetary bodies.

中文翻译:

微生物无处不在吗?

Baas-Becking 以“万物无处不在,但环境选择”的猜想而闻名。尽管这句格言在很大程度上受到微生物生物地理数据的挑战,但即使是较弱的说法,也没有回答关于理论上是否所有可以支持生命的环境都包含生命的问题。在过去十年中,发现了与居住区脱节的热消毒可居住环境,以及诸如无菌但可居住的人类胎儿肠道等生物体内的栖息地,这表明存在明显缺乏积极代谢或繁殖生命的宏观可居住环境的多样性. 不太清楚的是这种环境在微米尺度上的状态,例如,在岩石空隙内或其他基质上和内部的生物群落之间。我讨论了这些类型环境的最新证据。这些环境在以下方面具有实际用途:(i)作为负控制,以了解微生物过程在地球化学循环和地质过程中的作用,(ii)深入了解生物圈在理论上可以扩展到所有空间的程度,(iii)建议在解释生命探测仪器的结果时要谨慎,并且 (iv) 有助于确定生命起源及其在其他行星体上流行的条件。
更新日期:2021-11-26
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