The wonderland known as Yellowstone National Park in the US has yielded a new marvel—an unusual bacterium that converts light to energy. The discovery was made in a hot spring at the park where colourful mats of microbes drift in the warmth. “This thing was just bizarre,” David M. Ward, a professor of microbial studies at Montana State University, said of the bacterium.

Bacteria, like plants, use photosynthesis to turn light into energy, of course. But, Ward said, the newly discovered type has “a new kind of photosynthesis. It uses the same kind of machinery, but has the parts in a different arrangement.”

The find is going to be important for unravelling the history of photosynthesis, in determining how microbes efficiently harvest energy, he said. “We’re running out of fossil fuel, so the more efficiently we can harvest light energy the better,” Ward said.

Discovery of the microbe, Candidatus Chloracidobacterium thermophilum, reported last week, has excited scientists. “Finding a previously unknown, chlorophyll-producing microbe is the discovery of a lifetime,” co-author Don Bryant, a professor of biotechnology at Penn State University, said in a statement.

The researchers discovered the bacterium living in the same hot springs where the microbe Thermus aquaticus had been found previously. T. aquaticus was crucial in making the polymerase chain reaction a routine procedure. PCR is used to amplify genetic material for testing and research.

There are other chlorophyl-producing microbes, but the new one is a completely different type than the others that are known, the researchers said. Cab. thermophilum grows near the surface of the hot springs together with other bacteria or blue-green algae, at a temperature of about 50-66.11 Celsius.

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