“Biological soil crusts” don’t look like much. In fact, people often trample right over these dark, or green-tinted, sometimes raised patches in the desert soil. But these scruffy stretches can house delicate ecosystems as varied and complexly interwoven as that of a lush, tropical rainforest.
Three new papers in the scientific journal Genome Association shed light on the microbes that commonly set up shop in biological soil crusts in Utah’s Moab Desert:
The papers present a genome of three different bacteria. These genomes contain genes known to enable certain biological forms and functions. Identifying these genes therefore speaks to the interplay of these bacteria as they eke out a living in their shared, severe environment.
The work was supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology elements of the NASA Astrobiology Program.
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