Audio Edition: The Cells That Breathe Two Ways
4/30/202613 min
In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time.
The story The Cells That Breathe Two Ways first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSusan Valot· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Quanta Audio Edition. In each of these biweekly episodes, we bring you a story direct from the Quanta website about developments in basic science and mathematics. I'm Susan Valot. In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn't be able to do. It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time. How and why can you have cells that breathe two ways? That's next. [upbeat music] Check out this feed every Tuesday for the Quanta Podcast. That's where editor-in-chief Samir Patel talks to our writers and editors about more of Quanta's most popular, interesting, and thought-provoking stories. [upbeat music] Take a deep breath. A flow of air has rushed into your lungs, where the oxygen moves into your bloodstream, fueling metabolic fires in cells throughout your body. You, being an aerobic organism, use oxygen as the cellular spark that frees molecular energy from the food you eat. But not all organisms on the planet live or breathe this way. Instead of using oxygen to harvest energy, many single-celled life forms that live in environments far from oxygen's reach,