Extremophile Exploration Project
Name: _________________________
Block: ___________
Introduction
Extremophiles are tough organisms. They are critters and creatures that can live
in environments that would kill most other living things. In fact, many
extremophiles have been identified in recent years living in environments where
people have previously though that NO living things could survive. What we’ve
learned about extremophiles has allowed us to identify all of the genes that make
us human, solve crimes, break down toxic waste, and has even helped us to
understand how life might exist on other planets. Extremophiles can be Animals,
Plants, Fungi, Protists, Bacteria, or Achaeans. Since we are just beginning to learn
about archaeans, we will focus on archaean extremophiles.
Instructions
1. From the introduction above, what is an extremophile?
2. What specific group of archaeans will we focus on (Hint: It’s one of the
three domains)?
Check out this Wikipedia article on extremophiles. Read first paragraph and the
“Characteristics” section of the article to yourself and answer the questions
below.
3. How old are the oldest viable (able to be brought to life) bacterial spores
that have been found on Earth?
4. A friend says to you, “I bet that you wouldn’t find any living things inside of
rocks buried underground at the bottom of the ocean.” You know that from
reading this article on extremophiles that they are wrong. Write a good
sentence that contains two facts from the article that would fill your friend
in on the truth about microbes.
Instructions:
Check out the .kmz file on my wiki for the Google Earth. It is called
“Extremophiles” and contains 5 placemarks showing a location around the world
where a different type of extremophile can be found. When you click on the
placemark some info about the place and the extremophiles that live there comes
up. Use the information included with each placemark to answer the questions
for each type of extremophile.
Acidophiles
5. Where is this placemark located? What does the surrounding land look
like? Would you consider this place polluted?
6. What kind of conditions does an acidophile like? What does the pH have to
be for an organism to be considered an extremophile?
7. What is something good that scientists hope to learn by studying these
organisms?
Hyperthermophile
8. Is this location in the United States? This location is a record holder, what
record does it have?
9. Explain the conditions that suit hyperthermophiles.
10. One of the archaeans that is a hyperthermophile is another record holder.
What is the organism and what record does it hold?
Click off the text and picture box and look at this location. Cool isn’t it?
Piezophiles
11. What is special about this placemark?
12.What is the pressure at which these organisms can survive?
13.These microbes sound pretty touch but something is very deadly to them,
what is it?
Psycrophiles
14. In what frozen lake are these archaeans found?
15. What makes psycrophiles special?
16.What do we hope to learn by studying these microbes?
Radioresistant
17. What is the historical significance of this placemark?
18.This is a group of extremophiles that has some heavy hitters. What record
does the archaean featured in this placemark description hold?
19. What is another place on Earth where these microbes could be found?