{"id":3107,"date":"2010-04-06T16:54:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T20:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2010-04-06T16:54:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T20:54:52","slug":"mitochondria-free-animals-live-in-oxygen-starved-basin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2010\/04\/06\/mitochondria-free-animals-live-in-oxygen-starved-basin\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitochondria-free animals live in oxygen-starved basin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Drawing of a loricifera Credit: NASA<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Researchers have discovered three species of <\/span>Loricifera<\/span><\/a> living in an oxygen-starved basin at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Loricifera are marine sediment-dwelling animals consisting of a head, mouth, digestive system and outer shell called a lorica.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The unnamed Loricifera species appears to have a large number of <\/span>hydrogenosome<\/span><\/a>-like organelles.\u00a0Mitochondria supply energy to <\/span>eukaryotic<\/span><\/a> cells which are essential to most living organisms.\u00a0While mitochondria rely on oxygen to function, Roberto Danovaro from the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy and his colleagues <\/span>suggest<\/span><\/a> the hydrogenosome-like organelles play a similar role but use hydrogen instead. Hydrogenosomes are in many ways the hydrogen-based equivalent of mitochondria in some single-celled organisms, such as fungi.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the researchers had located multi-celled animals in other anoxic environments, this is the first discovery of oxygen-independent, mitochondria-less metazoa\u2014multi-celled animals\u2014living in this particular basin. And these are the first\u00a0that researchers believe are\u00a0permanent residents of an oxygen-starved environment. In a Nature <\/span>article<\/span><\/a> today, Danovaro described the exploration of biodiversity in this anoxic environment like \u201cgoing to the Moon to collect rocks.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roberto Danovaro, Antonio Dell\u2019Anno, Antonio Pusceddu, Cristina Gambi, Iben Heiner, & Reinhardt Mobjerg Kristensen (2010). The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions BMC Biology, 8<\/span> (3)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have discovered three species of Loricifera living in an oxygen-starved basin at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Loricifera are marine sediment-dwelling animals consisting of a head, mouth, digestive system and outer shell called a lorica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[651,652,653,654,655,656],"class_list":["post-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-anoxic-enironment","tag-hydrogen","tag-loricifera","tag-mediterranean-sea","tag-mitochondria","tag-oxygen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}