Incendiamoeba cascadensis, nicknamed the fire amoeba, was collected in California's Lassen Volcanic National Park. NASA says a funded team watched it reproduce by division at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, which NASA equates to 63 degrees Celsius. New Scientist says it can survive water up to 70°C, eats and reproduces only up to 63°C, and stops moving above 64°C. Angela Oliverio says 60°C had been treated as a barrier for eukaryotes, cells whose DNA sits inside a nucleus.
NASA says a funded team watched Incendiamoeba cascadensis reproduce by division at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, equated on the NASA page with 63 degrees Celsius, in the heated waters of California's Lassen Volcanic National Park. New Scientist reports the same organism, nicknamed the fire amoeba by the researchers who collected it, from that park. The shared finding is a complex cell, one with a nucleus, dividing at that heat.[1], [2]
New Scientist separates three limits. The amoeba can survive in waters heated up to 70°C. It only retains the ability to eat and reproduce up to 63°C, and it loses the ability to move above 64°C. A photograph caption on the page shows a cell reproducing at 63°C. Angela Oliverio of Syracuse University tells New Scientist that 60°C had been the barrier for eukaryotes, the branch of life whose cells keep DNA inside a nucleus, including animals and plants.[2]
NASA says high temperatures can destroy necessary cell parts, which is a particular problem for cells with complex parts such as a nucleus around genetic information. It says astrobiologists use Earth's extremes to judge where organisms might live on less hospitable worlds, and that earlier extremophile work mostly concerned bacteria and archaea, simpler cells without that nucleus. The new study, NASA writes, shows eukaryotes might be more durable than thought. New Scientist quotes Oliverio comparing the old 60°C line to the four-minute mile: once broken, further breaks come sooner. The accounts do not place a specimen on another planet.[1], [2]
