For many hundreds of years, scientists have been convinced that all life on our planet is divided into chemotrophs and phototrophs. Chemotrophs get electricity from energy-consuming substances in the environment, like many animals and humans from food, phototrophs - from sunlight. However, it has recently become known that there is a third type of life on Earth. These creatures, no matter how fantastic it may sound, feed on pure electricity. They have already been called electrotrophs.
These organisms were probably first noticed by Japanese biologists a year ago. Scientists from the Land of the Rising Sun studied deep-sea bacteria that oxidize ferrous iron to ferric iron and receive vital energy from this. The researchers suggested that the simplest iron in this case is not necessary, and "fed" the microorganisms with pure electricity, that is, electrons. And they perfectly accepted the offered "breakfast" …
After that, American biophysicists began to study electrotrophs in nature. Experts climbed into a one and a half-kilometer abandoned mine in southwestern South Dakota and found old pipes there, in which water and rust remained. Scientists took a sample of water and placed electrodes in it, through which a current was sent. In five months, the microbes should grow, and then the Americans will be able to tell with certainty whether such bacteria can actually feed directly on electrons.
Electrotrophic creatures are part of our planet
Not so long ago, on the seabed near Catalina Island in the Caribbean Sea, a large variety of bacteria were discovered that extract electricity from minerals and metals. If the assumptions of scientists are correct, then these microbes are capable of feeding on clean electricity, and there are a great many of them on Earth - in particular, in marine sediments under the oceans, in crevices under the earth's surface, and so on. At first, experts were amazed that such organisms exist at all, and now they are stunned because "electro-eating microbes" can make up a significant percentage of the world's inhabitants.
Experts are currently trying to determine how these microorganisms are metabolized. Apparently, electrons are transferred from the environment to bacteria through heme-containing proteins in membranes. Previously it was believed that not a single living creature in our world is capable of this. As soon as scientists prove once and for all that electrotrophs exist, we can talk about a real revolution in the field of biology.
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There is nothing surprising in the fact that living things are powered by electricity. We, using carbohydrates, proteins and fats, assimilate electricity at the cellular level. Plants get their electricity from sunlight through photosynthesis. The famous Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi once said at the same time a scientific and poetic phrase: "Life is just an electron that seeks rest." The only question is how this or that organism extracts this electron from the environment.
Scientists are convinced that the study of electrotrophs promises many discoveries for science. Perhaps these amazing bacteria will allow specialists to shed light on how biological life originated on our planet.