Re: are we encouraging new species of archaea by creating extreme conditions?

Dear muzzamil,

I don't think we are "creating new species" of archaea by creating extreme conditions. What I think is happening is that we are becoming more aware of the organisms that live in naturally occurring "extreme" places and also selecting for certain organisms in some of the environments that we create.

There are lots of natural environments that we think of as extreme. Think about very salty brine lakes or the polar regions, deep sea vents, hot springs or deep inside the earths crust. They seem extreme to us because we could not survive there, but we know that many types of microbes thrive in these places. So I'd say that nature produces environments far more extreme than most human creations.

You mention archaea, which you probably know are a third branch of life, single-celled like bacteria but different to both bacteria and eucarya (organisms with more complex cells). Many archaea are indeed what we call "extremophiles", living in these extreme environments, but many are not - they live in the rumen of cows, in soil and even on our teeth. Extremophiles can also be bacteria - so not all archaea are extremophiles and not all extremophiles are archaea.

You may be thinking about the extreme human-made places where we have found life - like the interior of nuclear reactors or on toxic waste dumps. It's certainly possible that by creating these places, we are selecting for organisms that can live there and as a consequence, populations of even "tougher" microbes are evolving. In the long run this could be a good thing, as we may be able to us them to help clean up our mess. But remember that we are not really creating new life - just selecting for characteristics that were present in natural populations.

You might like this link for more extremophile information:
http://www.babs.unsw.edu.au/research/ehm/lab_cavicchioli_extremo.html