Almost two miles beneath the earth's surface in a South African goldmine, researchers have found a new species of bacteria that lives in total isolation from any other organism. The discovery offers the first known example of an ecosystem that isn't a complex web of different life forms, but is instead hosts just one self-sufficient species. The bacteria, Desulforudis audaxviator, is able to extract all its food and energy directly from the surrounding water and rocks, and researchers say the independent microbe offers a glimpse of the shape life could take on other planets. Researchers wanted to know what organisms were living in the mine's deep fissures, a habitat completely devoid of light and oxygen, so they analyzed the genes present in a water sample to determine what species lived there.
They filtered a total of 5,600 liters of mine water to get their sample, which gave other microbes plenty ...
