On the finish of its life, the phoenix goes out in model. With a loud cry, the crimson fowl bursts into flames. Then from a pile of ash, a child fowl pokes out its tiny head. The phoenix has burned, however it’s born anew. This story is frequent to historic Greek and Egyptian mythology. And references to the phoenix span fiction right this moment, from Harry Potter to the anime collection One Piece.
There aren’t any actual phoenixes hiding wherever. However science has revealed that some dwelling issues can take fairly a bit of warmth. And just like the phoenix, just a few are even born from the ashes.
Some single-celled life-forms generally known as hyperthermophiles prefer it sizzling. These microbes dwell in locations akin to sizzling springs and deep-sea vents. Some are micro organism. However the hardest, hottest of all are members of the archaea, one of many three domains of life.
Not all archaea love the warmth, however the ones studied by Robert Kelly, a microbiologist at North Carolina State College in Raleigh, do. The higher restrict for these hardy cells is 120° Celsius (250° Fahrenheit) — properly above the boiling level of water. If you happen to step into the new springs the place they dwell, Kelly says, “your pores and skin will principally simply fall off your bones.” At temperatures that prime, he explains, meat — together with human muscle — begins to prepare dinner. Proteins crumble.
However archaea have advanced molecular methods that maintain proteins secure in these environments. Kelly and his colleagues have discovered 1000’s of tiny relationships between molecules that assist maintain archaea cells collectively as temperatures soar.
“Nature has lots of very refined issues [it does] to stabilize a protein,” he says.
Nature additionally gives warmth safety to animals which can be a lot bigger than a single cell.
In South Africa, beetles known as weevils dwell within the fynbos — a dry, shrub-filled space that’s susceptible to wildfires. Entomologist Marion Javal was on a hike there along with her buddies a number of years in the past. As they crossed an space that lately had burned, she acquired impressed.
“We noticed a bunch of very tiny weevils strolling on the ground. However, like, very, very small bugs that aren’t actually capable of fly,” says Javal, of the Institute of Analysis for Improvement in Montpellier, France. “We began questioning how and why they had been right here.”
Weevils capable of fly would be capable of escape a burn. However these that may’t fly are caught, Javal says. Bugs are ectothermic — their our bodies are the identical temperature because the air round them. Because the air heats up throughout a wildfire, they do too. So how do flightless bugs survive the burn?
Javal and her colleagues collected weevils from the world and examined how a lot warmth they might take. One species, Ocladius costiger, might survive at as much as 52.6° C (126.7° F). One other, Cryptolarynx variabilis, lived at as much as 53.4° C (128.1° F), the researchers reported in 2022 in Ecological Entomology.
“It was fairly sudden to attempt to discover such excessive temperature for these very tiny weevils that we had within the research,” Javal says.
Just like the archaea, these beetles might need some molecular diversifications of their cells that assist them survive, she notes. Or maybe the bugs dig down into the soil to flee the flames.
Different weevil species discover security in one other life-form that may face up to the burn, Javal notes. These beetles lay eggs inside crops with robust, woody exteriors that act as pure hearth safety. When the wildfires peter out, the weevil eggs hatch — like a phoenix from the ashes.
