What is it about?
Life finds a way. Even at the bottom of the ocean where there is no sunlight and very little oxygen, microbes thrive, fed by energy and molecules from rocks that transform upon meeting cold salt water. Scientists at the University of Utah brought some of that weird, rock-powered life to the surface as reported in PLOS ONE. Undergraduates Payton Utzman, Briggs Miller and Mary Fairbanks, working with graduate student Vincent Mays searched the combined genes from many microbes at the Lost City Hydrothermal Field and found DNA repair genes. Finding DNA repair at this special environment has important implications for Astrobiology and how life might survive on other planets and moons. This work was funded by the NSF @nsf and by UROP @urop
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Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The origins of the GO DNA repair pathway are unknown. The discovery of GO DNA repair enzymes in metagenomes from the Lost City Hydrothermal Field help us understand conditions where microbes find GO DNA repair advantageous. The chemical transformation of certain rocks when these contact sea water raises the temperature and consumes oxygen, resulting in an environment with high pH and almost no molecular oxygen. The repair of lesions with oxidized guanine appears to be advantageous even in environments that lack molecular oxygen and probably evolved well before the Great Oxidation Event. These insights need to be considered when developing models for the origin of cell based life and for how life may have emerged on other planets.
Perspectives
I am really excited about this project because of the important role played by undergraduates at the University of Utah. The idea that MutY may be present at the Lost City Hydrothermal Field was first tested by Emily Dart, a student in my Molecular Biology of DNA Lab course, who happened to also be working with Dr. William Brazelton. I knew that Dr. Brazelton had collected DNA from the Lost City, and Emily working with her team mates in the course found genes encoding at least portions of MutY! Since that first analysis, the sequence technology improved, more samples from another expedition generated metagenomes with better coverage, and we now have functional tests that show these MutYs from the bottom of the ocean actually work to prevent mutations in lab strains of bacteria. All these discoveries were made possible by basic science research by undergraduates, something that I am very proud to celebrate!
Martin Horvath
University of Utah
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Metagenome mining and functional analysis reveal oxidized guanine DNA repair at the Lost City Hydrothermal Field, PLoS ONE, May 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284642.
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