Maybe the mitochondria a case of a parasite being eaten by the wrong host. Thats why it was able to survive its consumption and eventually turn symbotic. Maybe it was attached to our ancestors pray and just never got digested with it.
Interesting, but the title was a bit misleading. I was curious to learn how an organism would utilize a nitrogen (N2) molecule. Those molecules have a triple bond that makes them practically inert.
Not for energy, surely, but for a bunch of other things like making amino acids. The term you want to search with to dig into that topic is "nitrogen fixation"
Oh well, I guess my denitrifying freshwater tank with substrate of sand, sani-sorb cat litter, and a layer of gravel. All this was penetrated by roots of Bacopa plants that were allowed to grow out of the tank. I bred a ton of white cloud minnows and cherry barbs in this setup.
Not just aquarists....wastewater treatment operators too...if we could use these guys?...I could be a step closer to having no job. But seriously, nitrates are one of our biggest problems.
@@flickercrab5704 Permaculture is a nature mimicry design science that uses ecosystems to create sustainable, self maintaining and abundant food systems locally within communities. I.e. replace lawns with diverse perennials in the forest layers that repeatedly produce food creating a self sufficient source of food that will give you way more than a single family can consume.
@@PaleGhost69 I don't know much about it but it sounds like there could be huge problem with harvesting it on mass scale (also there might be problem with pests)
@@ImieNazwiskoOK The whole idea is you don't have to do most things on a mass scale. You do them in your own communities, right outside your door, in the empty lot across the street, in the parks. The pests provide a vital role in the ecosystem. The reason we see them as a problem is because we grow huge monocultures which is a free buffet out in the open. When they have to find the plants they want in a real forest, they aren't as successful because there's so much diversity that they get confused or slowed by the wrong choices. While doing so they become easy food for predators and the ecosystem will balance itself out. We have the ability to stack functions on the same piece of land and still grow more than the pests can destroy. The whole idea is to thrive in abundance and create self sufficient communities. Instead of relying on food to be transported hundreds or thousands of miles to sit at a store and rot on the shelf until it gets bleached when it's thrown out. It seriously has the potential to fix so many problems including climate change, starvation, dehydration, soil depletion and others. We don't have to rely on the government or corporations to save it. We can do it ourselves, for our families and neighbors. All it takes is one small step. Go plant a few fruit trees or berry bushes.
My dentist tried that on me once, but it did NOTHING. Not much of a surprise, as many analgesics have little to no effect on me, besides which I'm a "rapid metaboliizer," mostly of things I've had before. Some medicos didn't want to believe that from me, until they gave me spinal analgesia that was "supposed to last for 12 to 16 hours," but I was able to walk to the toilet and empty my bladder *BEFORE* I'd reached the _THREE HOURS_ mark. *THEN they believed.*
I find this very exciting because it provides another example of endosymbiosis that might help us understand the process by which we teamed up with mitochondria. Maybe it was more inevitable than we thought.
2:50 Hold up! They take in a molecule that contains nitrogen and oxygen. They use up the oxygen and discard the nitrogen? And you call this *nitrogen-breathing*
@@danielfulbright8685 i guess, but eukaryotes and prokaryotes come from a common ancestor as far as we can tell, and as far as we can tell all life with the possible exception of viruses have a common ancestor, viruses being fairly distinct may or may not have split earlier
"Life is a dance you learn as you go. Sometimes you lead. Sometimes you follow. Don't worry about what you don't know. Life is a dance you learn as you go." Clearly this is about Evolution By Natural Selection.
@@chrstfer2452 it is required that what you eat is alive and whole tho Just don't autoinfect yourself with parasites and/or eat some poor critter whole Please
I learned about mitochondria in my anatomy classes in massage school and in personally training school. We were told they were organelles. But I had no idea they were actually bacteria! (Not until a few Schshows ago) That's super freaking cool!!!!! And another example of Scishow having information that even really good schools didn't share. 👍
Denitrifying bacteria are critical in wastewater treatment and have been known for a very long time. The uniqueness is this process being found in a eukaryote, not in using nitrate as an electron receptor. Guess what, other anaerobic bacteria use sulfates for that, unfortunately producing H2S. Fermentation rarely gets all the way to CO2. Ethanol or lactic acid are the more common waste products. BTW, to say this thing "breathes nitrogen" is really strange. It combusts organics using *nitrate* and exhales nitrogen. It would make more sense to say it "breathes" nitrate, though nitrate is not a gas. You and I *exhale* carbon dioxide; we don't particularly "breathe" it. Nitrogen is pretty inert; nitrate is used as the oxidant in some explosives. Consider how to be more precise in your language.
I was amazed to think they were reducing nitrogen. Nitrate is totally reasonable. However, I fully support simplifying the hard science to reach a wider audience. Especially considering it is unavoidable unless you just read the paper.
It's interesting that oxygen breathing cells managed to evolve into complicated organisms while those that breathe with other molecules seem to have stayed at single cell stage
Molecular oxygen is one of the best electron acceptor in the universe, and possibly the very best one that carbon and water based lifeforms can easily get access to (all the ones better than molecular oxygen tend to explode when they touch water), so oxygen breathing produces more energy per unit of fuel than any other form of breathing using any other molecule, and being complicated and multicellular requires a higher energy budget than being a single cell.
Yet another really fascinating aspect of life. It finds a way. Really makes you wonder what other lifeforms exist in the universe that found other ways to live. Our environment as we know it could very well be very toxic to other lifeforms just like we would die on their planets.
I prefer the less frenetic tempo and cadence of Hank Greene's delivery. When you narrate that microscope channel about uni-cellular life (?) you are calmer :)
It does breathe nitrogen tho. Nitrate is nitrogen and oxygen combined and it inhaled it and breathes and uses nitrogen to gain energy. We breathe in nitrogen as well, but we breathe and use oxygen to get energy, so they aren’t incorrect in saying nitrogen breathing
Microbial use of nitrate as an electron acceptor is quite widespread among bacterial phyla. Bacillus subtilis, a species generally thought to be O2 dependent will grow anaerobically if given nitrate. Pseudomonas aeruginosa can also such as well as other species. These processes are important in nitrogen cycling across ecosystems and also in our gut. Thanks for sharing!
Neat! I feel like it might be possible (someday, a really, REALLY long time from now of course) to detect life in the strangest places in our solar system too. Even if all the "aliens" that we find are single celled critters it's a fantastic idea to play with - the "what if life really is EVERYWHERE" game :D
But if it's multicellular then it's bad news for us. Bcoz it will prove that the great filter is not between the evolution of multicellular or eukaryotes. It's actually ahead of us and we're not unique and will likely not pass through it.
The issue isn’t really where life can survive - it’s possible that life can survive nearly anywhere with enough adaptation - the issue is the chemical and physical conditions necessary for life to form, and then a proper way for those adaptations to evolve. It’s possible that we could engineer life to survive on a planet with a totally different atmosphere, but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean that specific evolutionary pathway was available to life, or that life could form on that planet in the first place
Humans are surprisingly evolved. I'm pretty sure I met a person who breathed nitrogen once. At least that was the only explanation I could find for them...
There are tons of people who breathe Nitrogen in my neighbourhood, if the canisters in the gutter are anything to go by... img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/7/3/4/0/7/0/webimg/671680925_o.jpg
@@rashoietolan3047 when I smoke angeldust I just sit in 1 spot, experience ego death, watch other eukaryotes and learn the meaning of life from 5th dimensional entities while simultaneously watching multiple life forms exist in alternate dimensions, cosmically aligning my energy to that of the source for a full soul transmagraphy...merging all matter into one dense mass, explode into a collapsing star, metamorphosing into myself through a complete mental rebirth until i reach the apex of the vortex before finally astroplaning to my favorite corner of the darkest void in the nebula and watch the rest of my trip in 3rd person. I'd hardly consider that "doing too much".
Even though ATP is in _NEARLY EVERY CELL_ in our bodies, a few years ago I was given a "chemical stress test" which involved a shot of ATP via IV. Immediately upon receiving the injection, I was COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BREATHE. However, as a retired RN I knew that ATP has a very short "half life" (about 45 seconds), and it would wear off before I was in any really nasty trouble. As most people can hold their breath for a couple of minutes, I _KNEW_ I should be able to breath very soon, so I was very calm. However, the nurse who gave me the shot of ATP _WASN'T_ calm, not one bit! *HE pretty much instantly flipped out!* The other nurses quickly put a blood pressure cuff on *HIM* (200/120!), and took _HIS_ pulse (I didn't hear what that was), and kept reassuring *HIM* that I would be all right! I was kept busy, gently patting his hand while smiling at him and "mouthing" that "I'll be OK!" I had to "mouth" it to him BECAUSE I _STILL_ COULDN'T BREATHE AT ALL! *HE* didn't start to calm down until, finally, after nearly four minutes, I was able to *(with great effort)* suck in a brief, gasping, whistling, tiny amount of air. (Have to admit that air tasted _really_ sweet; I _WAS_ almost at my limit!) After doing as the Doctors had insisted and resting for a half hour, the Nurse was sent home for the rest of his shift, and with firm insfructions to monitor his own vital signs & call for an ambulance if he started to feel bad. (He recovered uneventfully, thank goodness.) My "full cardiac workup" turned out to be *absolutely normal* - for a non-smoker in her 20s... which I wasn't. I was then in my mid-50s, _AND_ I smoked. As I'm always telling folks: *"EVERY body* _IS_ *different!"*
Damn, you are telling me this isn't just an unknown organelle but an organism in the process of becoming an organelle? I wish that was my area of biology.
I was just reading a sci fi story with a nitrogen breather a few hours ago. I was thinking "how could something use nitrogen?" Inhaling nitrate and exhaling n2 makes sense
@@KateeAngel But not as an energy source. Nitrogen fixers use ATP (or sugar+oxidant based respiration to produce ATP) to make reactive nitrogen such as ammonia from relatively inert N2, they then use the "fixed" nitrogen not as fuel but as construction material (to create amino acids and other organic nitrogen used to build proteins etc). "Nitrogen fixing" plants (which don't fix nitrogen but merely host bacteria that do) often feed as much as a fifth of the sugar they produce to their symbionts, because they are more desperate for organic nitrogen than for energy.
I'm sorry, did you say we're witnessing the evolution of NEW ENDOSYMBIOTIC LINEAGE? Because to me that feels like a development in eukaryotic microbiology on the scale of, say, the discovery of archaea. Am I misunderstanding? Because this seems like a REALLY big deal.
Perhaps there's some Earth-like planet or moon somewhere in the cosmos which has a reducing atmosphere (i.e. no oxygen) where all the creatures, even multicellular/advanced ones, breathe nitrogen.
A friend of mine used to show up at parties and Dead concerts with huge tanks of the stuff. He would fill large trash-bags with the stuff and pass them around. It was a gas.
so between mitochondria, chloroplast, and this, that's the third time a cell-ception happened. I was wondering if this might be an answer to the fermi paradox since it seems to be a requirement for complex life, yet it hasn't happened that often
The nitrate breathers are fascinating, but every time and I mean EVERY time Sci Show talks about bacterial metabolism there as so many things awkwardly glossed over it almost counts as misleading
A bit disappointing hearing that their respiration (breathing is something else) is based in nitrate not nitrogen as the title says. Also, nitrate is not a molecule, please! it is an ion!!!
I guess that's why the second paragraph of the wikipedia article about molecules says: "In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, the distinction from ions is dropped and molecule is often used when referring to polyatomic ions." The distinction just isn't useful and most chemists won't insist on it or just not use it at all. Neutral molecules can have charges to. For example (one of) the neutral version of (simple) amino acids has to charges at opposite ends (zwitterion).
Thus our definition of the ingredients for life is expended once more. Discoveries like this are why I'm _certain_ there exists life unlike anything we know, somewhere among the stars.
As we currently define relation by DNA sequence/gene preservation, by definition everything that can be classified with this system is related in some form as long as there’s no evidence that DNA/RNA evolved independently multiple times
Is the current Icelandic volcano capable of altering climate? If it does erupt for months or even years how would that compare to other volcanoes, eruptive gas wise.
I've read about denitrifying bacteria in marine aquarium books since I was a wee tween, what makes this new discovery so significant over known species?
It has been suggested by some that the evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes is the greatest of the Fermi Paradox great filters because we only know it has happened once in the history of Earth. But if we are on the verge of seeing it happen again that bodes well for the possibility of complex life developing on other planets. The Fermi Paradox refers to a question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi: Where is all the extra-terrestrial life? The idea being that in a universe as old as ours and even if it is impossible to travel faster than light there has been time for technologic extra-terrestial civilizations to have spread out and for evidence of these civilizations to be visible from Earth. Great Filters are attempts to answer that question by identifying things that would stop life from evolving and eventually moving out into space. Examples could include the fact that the most common stars are significantly dimmer than our own placing the habitable zone (the orbits in which liquid water is possible) much closer to the star where planets usually become tidally locked (the same side always faces the star) and where the planets face more potentially dangerous solar storms. Another potential filter is the percentages of technological civilizations that destroy themselves possibly through nuclear war. If the evolution of Eukaryotic life is not a filter with lottery odds (e.g. only 1 out of 100 million worlds that develop single celled life evolve eukaryotes) it makes it more likely the great filter is ahead of us, not behind us. In other words the odds human life will survive to move out beyond our solar system go way down.
Ok, so there's a lake in Switzerland where researchers found organisms that didn't breath with oxygen, but with nitrogen. But even more intersting, the little bacteria that enables this process is NOT an organelle like our mitochondrias are. They are still at the state of bacteria. So we think we're witnessing the transition from bacteria to organelle with this example. Plus eventually, this exemple has also been found in other places thoughout the world. Got it !
@@paddor Nitrates are part of (cattle) urine. They are fertilizers, but when it comes to fertilizing fresh water lakes, there is such a thing as "too much". The shallow lakes of the Swiss Mittelland are notoriously over-fertilized due to the intensive agriculture surrounding them. (Thus also oxygen depleted at the bottom.)
Thats not how scientists think eukaryotes formed. Almost certainly it was some symbiosis that began and they evolved to live enmeshed in each other, as we see. An archea didn't just randomly swallow a bacteria and poor eukaryotes, none of the machinery would have worked
I am not sure of what they are breathing but it is not nitrate. NO3 is a radical that is bonded to another hydrocarbons, radical, or metal ion. HNO3 is nitric acid but NO3 does not exits as a gas or even in a solution without charge. NO3 is bonded to KNO3 to make salt peter the ingredient in gunpowder. So I think there was a misprint or misunderstanding and you intend to say NO or N2O. If nitrate is involved there needs to be a more complete explanation but the term "breath" is whole inappropriate..
Maybe some of these bacteria could be moved to the dead zone mouth of the Mississippi. Would it be possible for these bacteria to produce oxygen in the dead zone that is saturated with nitrates. Not sure if that makes sense.
I imagine a day in the not to distant future where farm animal are adapted with engineered bacteria serving a function inside the cells of these farm animals, namely producing molecules of direct value for the animal or for us where the animal simply becomes a bioreactor.
"I like that guy Ted, he's a decent eukaryote" I'm gonna start saying that now. Or " man Ted is one terrible eukaryote" or "that tree is very shady eukaryote" ...thanks
I'm missing something here: The bacteria is termed as eukaryote which is said to be there for 200-300 billion years. But at the beginning of the video he says eukaryotes evolved 2 billion years ago.🤔
I recognize the description of the Krebs cycle, but like in college, I still have difficulty understanding it, but Hank got me closer to understanding it. Thanks Hank!
Go to Brilliant.org/SciShow to try their Computational Biology course. Sign up now and get 20% off an annual Premium subscription.
amogus
@@RMSLusitania ratioed their own comment lol
Maybe the mitochondria a case of a parasite being eaten by the wrong host. Thats why it was able to survive its consumption and eventually turn symbotic. Maybe it was attached to our ancestors pray and just never got digested with it.
Interesting, but the title was a bit misleading. I was curious to learn how an organism would utilize a nitrogen (N2) molecule. Those molecules have a triple bond that makes them practically inert.
Not for energy, surely, but for a bunch of other things like making amino acids.
The term you want to search with to dig into that topic is "nitrogen fixation"
Oh, and a related crash course video, though a bit broader than just that topic specifically: th-cam.com/video/leHy-Y_8nRs/w-d-xo.html
The thumbnail of the video makes it very clear what the organism is breathing.
“Life, uh, finds a way.”
-Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)
Beat me to it
Jarrett watches Goldblum. Jarrett quotes Goldblum. Luka watches Goldblum. Luka meets Jarrett. Jarrett beats Luka.
@@allyourpie4323 Jarrett inherits the earth.
@@Pete...NoNotThatOne 👏👏
Freshwater aquarist be like: "freshwater denitrifying bacteria? Sweet"
that’s exactly what I was thinking “hmmmm, wonder if I can get these guys into my substrate” lmao
Yeah... I'm one of those 🤣😎
This sounds amazingly like jargon
Oh well, I guess my denitrifying freshwater tank with substrate of sand, sani-sorb cat litter, and a layer of gravel. All this was penetrated by roots of Bacopa plants that were allowed to grow out of the tank. I bred a ton of white cloud minnows and cherry barbs in this setup.
Not just aquarists....wastewater treatment operators too...if we could use these guys?...I could be a step closer to having no job. But seriously, nitrates are one of our biggest problems.
Please consider doing a video on permaculture and urban food forests.
I second this idea
Me too; what is it?
@@flickercrab5704 Permaculture is a nature mimicry design science that uses ecosystems to create sustainable, self maintaining and abundant food systems locally within communities. I.e. replace lawns with diverse perennials in the forest layers that repeatedly produce food creating a self sufficient source of food that will give you way more than a single family can consume.
@@PaleGhost69 I don't know much about it but it sounds like there could be huge problem with harvesting it on mass scale (also there might be problem with pests)
@@ImieNazwiskoOK The whole idea is you don't have to do most things on a mass scale. You do them in your own communities, right outside your door, in the empty lot across the street, in the parks.
The pests provide a vital role in the ecosystem. The reason we see them as a problem is because we grow huge monocultures which is a free buffet out in the open. When they have to find the plants they want in a real forest, they aren't as successful because there's so much diversity that they get confused or slowed by the wrong choices. While doing so they become easy food for predators and the ecosystem will balance itself out. We have the ability to stack functions on the same piece of land and still grow more than the pests can destroy.
The whole idea is to thrive in abundance and create self sufficient communities. Instead of relying on food to be transported hundreds or thousands of miles to sit at a store and rot on the shelf until it gets bleached when it's thrown out. It seriously has the potential to fix so many problems including climate change, starvation, dehydration, soil depletion and others.
We don't have to rely on the government or corporations to save it. We can do it ourselves, for our families and neighbors. All it takes is one small step. Go plant a few fruit trees or berry bushes.
I used to enjoy breathing nitrous oxide quite a lot.
Same
Imagine only breathing that and evolving ing ing ing ing ing
My dentist tried that on me once, but it did NOTHING. Not much of a surprise, as many analgesics have little to no effect on me, besides which I'm a "rapid metaboliizer," mostly of things I've had before. Some medicos didn't want to believe that from me, until they gave me spinal analgesia that was "supposed to last for 12 to 16 hours," but I was able to walk to the toilet and empty my bladder *BEFORE* I'd reached the _THREE HOURS_ mark. *THEN they believed.*
Whippet world
@@gustavmahler3228Shoulder-high industrial cylinders of medical grade. I had a friend who had a friend.
I find this very exciting because it provides another example of endosymbiosis that might help us understand the process by which we teamed up with mitochondria. Maybe it was more inevitable than we thought.
2:50 Hold up! They take in a molecule that contains nitrogen and oxygen. They use up the oxygen and discard the nitrogen? And you call this *nitrogen-breathing*
“An organism distantly related to us” - i.e., an organism. 🙂
Except aliens 👽
Not All organisms are eukaryotic
@@danielfulbright8685 i guess, but eukaryotes and prokaryotes come from a common ancestor as far as we can tell, and as far as we can tell all life with the possible exception of viruses have a common ancestor, viruses being fairly distinct may or may not have split earlier
I.E. an organism that isn't closely related to us.
@@danielfulbright8685 but all organisms likely came from the same beginning or cell
Its bound to happen, find more and more midsteps in the evolutionary grid.
...or sidesteps.
@@clogs4956 Or parallels
"Life is a dance you learn as you go. Sometimes you lead. Sometimes you follow. Don't worry about what you don't know. Life is a dance you learn as you go."
Clearly this is about Evolution By Natural Selection.
I like nitrogen
Just something very satisfying about the word
The endosymbiotic theory is definitely in my all time top five favorite bio theories
Especially since it gives me the theological backing I need to justify eating meat. I'm just trying to evolve.
@@chrstfer2452 No. Just...no
@@chrstfer2452 it is required that what you eat is alive and whole tho
Just don't autoinfect yourself with parasites and/or eat some poor critter whole
Please
@@user-ft3jq5vi2l Why do you need to back your carnivorous nature ? And what is your theological standpoint ?
@@azertyuiop432 listen dude I only wrote a half-joking reply on some weird theology stuff, don't drag me into this
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for finding and sharing this research.
I learned about mitochondria in my anatomy classes in massage school and in personally training school. We were told they were organelles. But I had no idea they were actually bacteria! (Not until a few Schshows ago) That's super freaking cool!!!!! And another example of Scishow having information that even really good schools didn't share. 👍
Denitrifying bacteria are critical in wastewater treatment and have been known for a very long time. The uniqueness is this process being found in a eukaryote, not in using nitrate as an electron receptor. Guess what, other anaerobic bacteria use sulfates for that, unfortunately producing H2S.
Fermentation rarely gets all the way to CO2. Ethanol or lactic acid are the more common waste products.
BTW, to say this thing "breathes nitrogen" is really strange. It combusts organics using *nitrate* and exhales nitrogen. It would make more sense to say it "breathes" nitrate, though nitrate is not a gas. You and I *exhale* carbon dioxide; we don't particularly "breathe" it. Nitrogen is pretty inert; nitrate is used as the oxidant in some explosives. Consider how to be more precise in your language.
Lots of comments sating this but I think you've expressed it best.
Yeah, scishow is sometimes guilty of dumbing down their video titles at the expense of accuracy, which I find frustrating
@@ramshacklealex7772 References are in the description. Feel free to delve them.
I was amazed to think they were reducing nitrogen. Nitrate is totally reasonable. However, I fully support simplifying the hard science to reach a wider audience. Especially considering it is unavoidable unless you just read the paper.
@@Kernith2 still no need to call it "breathing". Call it a metabolism based on nitrogen instead of oxygen, that's accessible enough
You learn something new everyday!
Fascinating! And it’s another contender for what is possible on other planets!
Right on! So cool!
all i've come here to say is that you have 6.66M subscribers and it made me smile on a rough day
It's interesting that oxygen breathing cells managed to evolve into complicated organisms while those that breathe with other molecules seem to have stayed at single cell stage
Molecular oxygen is one of the best electron acceptor in the universe, and possibly the very best one that carbon and water based lifeforms can easily get access to (all the ones better than molecular oxygen tend to explode when they touch water), so oxygen breathing produces more energy per unit of fuel than any other form of breathing using any other molecule, and being complicated and multicellular requires a higher energy budget than being a single cell.
Yet another really fascinating aspect of life. It finds a way. Really makes you wonder what other lifeforms exist in the universe that found other ways to live. Our environment as we know it could very well be very toxic to other lifeforms just like we would die on their planets.
I haven't seen SciShow in a while. God this channel is great
Wow! Amazing discovery!
Greetings from Switzerland!
1:23 I was expecting Jo's montage "the POWERHOUSE of the CELL" : O
In a planet with a different atmospher. Have just as advanced life but evolved from different cell forms
This is my favorite topic for this week.
I prefer the less frenetic tempo and cadence of Hank Greene's delivery. When you narrate that microscope channel about uni-cellular life (?) you are calmer :)
I love this channel
You also seem to love one-punch-man
Very cool science, but please correct the title: these are *nitrate* breathing organisms, not *nitrogen* breathing organisms.
Plus, if it's eukaryotic, that means by definition that it isn't a bacterium
We also breathe nitrogen, if we didn't the oxygen would not be so pleasant. So the intro is not precise in its terminology.
It does breathe nitrogen tho. Nitrate is nitrogen and oxygen combined and it inhaled it and breathes and uses nitrogen to gain energy. We breathe in nitrogen as well, but we breathe and use oxygen to get energy, so they aren’t incorrect in saying nitrogen breathing
@@markvickery5894 thanks, I don't think everyone really got it
@@Draakdarkmaster6 okay except in this case the usable component as you describe is nitrogen, not oxygen as it is for us
Microbial use of nitrate as an electron acceptor is quite widespread among bacterial phyla. Bacillus subtilis, a species generally thought to be O2 dependent will grow anaerobically if given nitrate. Pseudomonas aeruginosa can also such as well as other species. These processes are important in nitrogen cycling across ecosystems and also in our gut. Thanks for sharing!
I want to make a Steve-O joke, but he's come so far and he's doing a hell of a lot better.
Neat! I feel like it might be possible (someday, a really, REALLY long time from now of course) to detect life in the strangest places in our solar system too. Even if all the "aliens" that we find are single celled critters it's a fantastic idea to play with - the "what if life really is EVERYWHERE" game :D
But if it's multicellular then it's bad news for us. Bcoz it will prove that the great filter is not between the evolution of multicellular or eukaryotes. It's actually ahead of us and we're not unique and will likely not pass through it.
@@Tempst yeah, I watched that Kurzgesagt video too hehe
The issue isn’t really where life can survive - it’s possible that life can survive nearly anywhere with enough adaptation - the issue is the chemical and physical conditions necessary for life to form, and then a proper way for those adaptations to evolve. It’s possible that we could engineer life to survive on a planet with a totally different atmosphere, but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean that specific evolutionary pathway was available to life, or that life could form on that planet in the first place
Humans are surprisingly evolved. I'm pretty sure I met a person who breathed nitrogen once.
At least that was the only explanation I could find for them...
There are tons of people who breathe Nitrogen in my neighbourhood, if the canisters in the gutter are anything to go by... img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/7/3/4/0/7/0/webimg/671680925_o.jpg
@@UFBMusic lmao
Them boys are off the angel dust , doing too much
@@rashoietolan3047 when I smoke angeldust I just sit in 1 spot, experience ego death, watch other eukaryotes and learn the meaning of life from 5th dimensional entities while simultaneously watching multiple life forms exist in alternate dimensions, cosmically aligning my energy to that of the source for a full soul transmagraphy...merging all matter into one dense mass, explode into a collapsing star, metamorphosing into myself through a complete mental rebirth until i reach the apex of the vortex before finally astroplaning to my favorite corner of the darkest void in the nebula and watch the rest of my trip in 3rd person. I'd hardly consider that "doing too much".
Uh, we all breathe nitrogen... It's like 70% of our atmosphere
I alway amazed how you dismantle complex topics into more digestible terms for us ..
ooh .. wait, thats makes you our symbiote?, our mitochon-GREEN
So Aliens from other planets could be someone who can breathe Nitrogen instead of Oxygen...Hmmm....Interesting
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Even though ATP is in _NEARLY EVERY CELL_ in our bodies, a few years ago I was given a "chemical stress test" which involved a shot of ATP via IV. Immediately upon receiving the injection, I was COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BREATHE. However, as a retired RN I knew that ATP has a very short "half life" (about 45 seconds), and it would wear off before I was in any really nasty trouble. As most people can hold their breath for a couple of minutes, I _KNEW_ I should be able to breath very soon, so I was very calm.
However, the nurse who gave me the shot of ATP _WASN'T_ calm, not one bit! *HE pretty much instantly flipped out!* The other nurses quickly put a blood pressure cuff on *HIM* (200/120!), and took _HIS_ pulse (I didn't hear what that was), and kept reassuring *HIM* that I would be all right! I was kept busy, gently patting his hand while smiling at him and "mouthing" that "I'll be OK!" I had to "mouth" it to him BECAUSE I _STILL_ COULDN'T BREATHE AT ALL! *HE* didn't start to calm down until, finally, after nearly four minutes, I was able to *(with great effort)* suck in a brief, gasping, whistling, tiny amount of air. (Have to admit that air tasted _really_ sweet; I _WAS_ almost at my limit!)
After doing as the Doctors had insisted and resting for a half hour, the Nurse was sent home for the rest of his shift, and with firm insfructions to monitor his own vital signs & call for an ambulance if he started to feel bad. (He recovered uneventfully, thank goodness.) My "full cardiac workup" turned out to be *absolutely normal* - for a non-smoker in her 20s... which I wasn't. I was then in my mid-50s, _AND_ I smoked. As I'm always telling folks: *"EVERY body* _IS_ *different!"*
Damn, you are telling me this isn't just an unknown organelle but an organism in the process of becoming an organelle? I wish that was my area of biology.
that would be neat using this concept in electronics, different atoms to steer electrons
😳
A science story that actually slipped through my net.....
Under the radar...
It's a good day!!!!
I was just reading a sci fi story with a nitrogen breather a few hours ago. I was thinking "how could something use nitrogen?" Inhaling nitrate and exhaling n2 makes sense
What was it?
The fact that microbes use nitrogen in all its forms is known for decades. And yes, many bacteria can use N2, they are nitrogen fixers
@@KateeAngel But not as an energy source. Nitrogen fixers use ATP (or sugar+oxidant based respiration to produce ATP) to make reactive nitrogen such as ammonia from relatively inert N2, they then use the "fixed" nitrogen not as fuel but as construction material (to create amino acids and other organic nitrogen used to build proteins etc). "Nitrogen fixing" plants (which don't fix nitrogen but merely host bacteria that do) often feed as much as a fifth of the sugar they produce to their symbionts, because they are more desperate for organic nitrogen than for energy.
Except that these breathe nitrates, not nitrogen.
I'm sorry, did you say we're witnessing the evolution of NEW ENDOSYMBIOTIC LINEAGE? Because to me that feels like a development in eukaryotic microbiology on the scale of, say, the discovery of archaea. Am I misunderstanding? Because this seems like a REALLY big deal.
As it was never directly mention in the video: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azoamicus_ciliaticola
Thank you!
Perhaps there's some Earth-like planet or moon somewhere in the cosmos which has a reducing atmosphere (i.e. no oxygen) where all the creatures, even multicellular/advanced ones, breathe nitrogen.
We got nitrogen organisms now, next is hydrogen and then electric :)
Electric eel
As a biochemist... this is insanely cool!!
Why didn't you post this earlier in may 😔 I was struggling hard with microbiology and this stuff was in it
Cool thanks
Life finds a way!
They breathe in Nooo
NOOO
Yes
🚪
and they feel negative about being so basic
Nooo
I used to know a guy who breathed a lot of N2O. He was always good for a laugh.
I assume the past tense is because he asphyxiated. ;-)
@@Temp0raryName I still do, but I used to too.
A friend of mine used to show up at parties and Dead concerts with huge tanks of the stuff. He would fill large trash-bags with the stuff and pass them around. It was a gas.
endosymbiosis is incredible, without it complex life wouldn't be able to exist.
so between mitochondria, chloroplast, and this, that's the third time a cell-ception happened. I was wondering if this might be an answer to the fermi paradox since it seems to be a requirement for complex life, yet it hasn't happened that often
This is fascinating. What happens to the oxygen in nitrates after the nitrogen is removed?
The nitrate breathers are fascinating, but every time and I mean EVERY time Sci Show talks about bacterial metabolism there as so many things awkwardly glossed over it almost counts as misleading
They only have so much time to fill. And they're infotainment, not an actual substitute for specific scientific education.
endosymbiosis has happened a few times. should do a video on it brown and red algae. serial, higher order, tertiary endosymbiosis
Hey so SciShow... What happened to that Dimascus Steel video???
A bit disappointing hearing that their respiration (breathing is something else) is based in nitrate not nitrogen as the title says. Also, nitrate is not a molecule, please! it is an ion!!!
Multi-atom ions are molecules, too.
@@Buriaku all multi atom ions matter
@@chevychase3103 That joke is too matter for me.
@@Buriaku Not really, molecules are electrically neutral entities consisting of more than one atom (IUPAC)
I guess that's why the second paragraph of the wikipedia article about molecules says:
"In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, the distinction from ions is dropped and molecule is often used when referring to polyatomic ions."
The distinction just isn't useful and most chemists won't insist on it or just not use it at all. Neutral molecules can have charges to. For example (one of) the neutral version of (simple) amino acids has to charges at opposite ends (zwitterion).
Thus our definition of the ingredients for life is expended once more. Discoveries like this are why I'm _certain_ there exists life unlike anything we know, somewhere among the stars.
Wow! What a news! My decade long biology knowledge just got flipped!
As we currently define relation by DNA sequence/gene preservation, by definition everything that can be classified with this system is related in some form as long as there’s no evidence that DNA/RNA evolved independently multiple times
Is it possible for the organism/alien life forms to live without breathing? Could it get all of its energy in some other way?
Planning an episode about nitrogen, we need more blue!
bio active wavelengths is a easy way to get electrons into cells via the connective tissue.
Is the current Icelandic volcano capable of altering climate? If it does erupt for months or even years how would that compare to other volcanoes, eruptive gas wise.
Depends on how much gas it erupts. Currently it's a minor eruption without much consequences if it continues for a few centuries.
This is reverse clickbait, the content is more captivating than the title.
I've read about denitrifying bacteria in marine aquarium books since I was a wee tween, what makes this new discovery so significant over known species?
Can the text on the screen be switched from all uppercase to normal format? It is quite hard to scan during such short time.
It has been suggested by some that the evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes is the greatest of the Fermi Paradox great filters because we only know it has happened once in the history of Earth. But if we are on the verge of seeing it happen again that bodes well for the possibility of complex life developing on other planets. The Fermi Paradox refers to a question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi: Where is all the extra-terrestrial life? The idea being that in a universe as old as ours and even if it is impossible to travel faster than light there has been time for technologic extra-terrestial civilizations to have spread out and for evidence of these civilizations to be visible from Earth. Great Filters are attempts to answer that question by identifying things that would stop life from evolving and eventually moving out into space. Examples could include the fact that the most common stars are significantly dimmer than our own placing the habitable zone (the orbits in which liquid water is possible) much closer to the star where planets usually become tidally locked (the same side always faces the star) and where the planets face more potentially dangerous solar storms. Another potential filter is the percentages of technological civilizations that destroy themselves possibly through nuclear war. If the evolution of Eukaryotic life is not a filter with lottery odds (e.g. only 1 out of 100 million worlds that develop single celled life evolve eukaryotes) it makes it more likely the great filter is ahead of us, not behind us. In other words the odds human life will survive to move out beyond our solar system go way down.
„Distantly related to us“ aka all life on earth
Ok, so there's a lake in Switzerland where researchers found organisms that didn't breath with oxygen, but with nitrogen. But even more intersting, the little bacteria that enables this process is NOT an organelle like our mitochondrias are. They are still at the state of bacteria. So we think we're witnessing the transition from bacteria to organelle with this example. Plus eventually, this exemple has also been found in other places thoughout the world. Got it !
Wondering what would happen if you transplanted these little critters into an animal cell, like an egg cell.
"THE POWER HOUSE OF THE CELL!!!"
The things you can discover when you dump a lot of agricultural runoff into a lake...
Please explain
@@paddor Nitrates are part of (cattle) urine. They are fertilizers, but when it comes to fertilizing fresh water lakes, there is such a thing as "too much". The shallow lakes of the Swiss Mittelland are notoriously over-fertilized due to the intensive agriculture surrounding them. (Thus also oxygen depleted at the bottom.)
@@HotelPapa100 Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks.
Fascinating 🖖🏼
What is the name of the organism, please? And what is the general family of the bacterium?
Fascinating ⚠️
I carry oats?
No! Eucaryotes!
You carry oats?
Where are all these oats coming from!?
@@teathesilkwing7616 My toe sis!
2 Billion years ago there lived 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗢𝘅𝘆𝗴𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 Bacteria.
Me :- After 2 Billion years Farting Methane
Great, now we need to look at Neptune's moon Triton as a potential source of life!
Is shampoo deadly for them?
Thats not how scientists think eukaryotes formed. Almost certainly it was some symbiosis that began and they evolved to live enmeshed in each other, as we see. An archea didn't just randomly swallow a bacteria and poor eukaryotes, none of the machinery would have worked
5:22 I really expected a mention of "Journey To the Microcosmos" right there but nope :( ...
So how does ATP production cycle look with NO3?
i always wondered why we use oxygen when oxygen makes up a tiny part of the atmosphere
but how did the mitochondria become part of the genome?
I am not sure of what they are breathing but it is not nitrate. NO3 is a radical that is bonded to another hydrocarbons, radical, or metal ion. HNO3 is nitric acid but NO3 does not exits as a gas or even in a solution without charge. NO3 is bonded to KNO3 to make salt peter the ingredient in gunpowder. So I think there was a misprint or misunderstanding and you intend to say NO or N2O. If nitrate is involved there needs to be a more complete explanation but the term "breath" is whole inappropriate..
Maybe some of these bacteria could be moved to the dead zone mouth of the Mississippi. Would it be possible for these bacteria to produce oxygen in the dead zone that is saturated with nitrates. Not sure if that makes sense.
That’s all well and good but, what is it’s Midi-chlorian count?
I imagine a day in the not to distant future where farm animal are adapted with engineered bacteria serving a function inside the cells of these farm animals, namely producing molecules of direct value for the animal or for us where the animal simply becomes a bioreactor.
ayo, what!?!?! breathe nitrogen???
We found love in a (seemingly) hopeless place 😂
That's only one of MANY theories behind the origin of nucleus and mitochondria.
Go Go Sci Show
"I like that guy Ted, he's a decent eukaryote" I'm gonna start saying that now. Or " man Ted is one terrible eukaryote" or "that tree is very shady eukaryote" ...thanks
"Distantly related to us" doesnt that include mostly anything alive?
So this is the blight from interstellar?
I'm missing something here:
The bacteria is termed as eukaryote which is said to be there for 200-300 billion years.
But at the beginning of the video he says eukaryotes evolved 2 billion years ago.🤔
I recognize the description of the Krebs cycle, but like in college, I still have difficulty understanding it, but Hank got me closer to understanding it. Thanks Hank!
Science for the SCIENCE GOD
Sacrifice your children!
Data for the DATA THRONE!
@@wildsideofthings7733 why can’t I be sacrificed? is always the children, am I not good enough :(
@@teathesilkwing7616 fine. Sacrifice the virgins then.
Just a thought
Why don't we use O2 and sugar to power our cars ?