Great Bugs of Fire - Volcano Loving Bugs

Biomolecules from these organisms are active at temperatures that generally degrade normal cellular molecules, such as enzymes, lipids, and nucleic acids.

When stored at room temperature, these molecules from volcanic microbes are in the "deep freeze" compared to their normal lives, thus offering tremendously extended shelf-life and stability in commercial use.

The first Archaea-related products were DNA polymerases for the research market. For example, New England Biolabs, a Beverly, Mass.-based biotechnology company, sells Vent and Deep Vent polymerases, used in DNA sequencing. These enzymes originally were isolated from hyperthermophiles associated with oceanic hydrothermal vents. Without analysis of these fiery microbes, neither the modern identification of human genetic diseases nor the use of DNA evidence in legal courts would even have been realized.

Researchers say that the heat and geochemical conditions in volcanic regions may be similar to conditions that existed on the young, water-covered, cooling Earth. Almost like a creature from science fiction, the volcanic microbe is different from the two other basic branches of life: bacteria and eukaryotes. The prokaryotes are the bacteria, while eukaryotes are the so-called higher forms of life, including humans, plants and animals.

A major difference is that eukaryotes put their genes inside a nucleus, while prokaryotes do not. In the archaea, there is no nucleus, but many genes behave like those in higher organisms. Archaea are thought to have a common ancestor with bacteria, but billions of years ago the third domain, eukaryotes, broke off from archaea, eventually developing into plants, animals and us. Archaea include microbes that live at the extremes of the planet - the very, very cold, hot or high-pressure places that no other form of life could endure.