Yellowstone National Park is a natural laboratory. Thermophiles are found in various geothermally heated regions of the Earth, such as hot springs like those in Yellowstone National Park. Thermophiles not only survives, but thrives in high temperatures, between 41 and 122 °C (106 and 252 °F). In Greek thermotita meaning is heat, and philia meaning is love (Thermophiles = HotLove). So, hotspots are with hot bodies.
Dr. Kary Mullis identified an enzyme in the bacterium that he named Taq polymerase which is used PCR test and earned him Nobel prize in 1993. Taq polymerase is capable of replicating strands of DNA at high temperatures that most enzymes cannot withstand. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplifies the amount of DNA in a sample. So, when a sample is collected from a person suspected to be infected by COVID-19, viral RNA is extracted from the sample, converted into DNA, and then replicated with a PCR machine so that even the smallest amount of RNA in the sample can be detected and quantified. Without PCR, the race to count the infected and develop a vaccine would be dramatically hindered. Scientists call PCR tests the gold standard because they are very accurate, sensitive and relatively fast.
In 1966, At the end of their field work in Yellowstone, Brock and his then-undergraduate student Hudson Freeze collected some microbial mat samples to bring back to the lab to attempt isolating microorganisms, including a sample of a photosynthetic mat thriving at 71.5°C (160 °F) in Mushroom Spring (located in the Lower Geyser Basin).
In 1966, Dr. Thomas Brock and his colleagues isolated a new bacterium, Thermus aquaticus, from a hot spring in the Lower Geyser Basin that has changed the course of microbiology.
Reverse transcription (RT)-PCR is used to amplify RNA targets. The RNA template is converted into complementary (c)DNA by the enzyme reverse transcriptase. The cDNA is then used as a template for exponential amplification using PCR. These made it theoretically possible to detect the transcripts of practically any gene.
PCR is now regularly used in medical research, genome mapping projects, and even crime scene investigations.
Perhaps thermophiles may have been our first hot ancestors. Perhaps as earth started colling 4.5 billion years ago, violent collisions with comets and asteroids brought the fluid of life - water - and the clouds and oceans began to take shape. Reconstruction of the ancestral biological sequences of the various ancestors may eventually point to one last universal common ancestor (LUCA) which could be Thermophile. Transfer of DNA may be a primitive form of life union, sustenance of life, or origin/creation of life.
So, the trip to Yellowstone Hotspot is a tribute to our ancestor worshipping of HotLove (Thermophile), Covid-19, Geysers, Hotspot and many other natural wonders.
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/how-thermophilic-bacterium-yellowstone-hot-spring-helping-fight-against
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