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Learning from extremophiles

It doesn’t seem to matter how inhospitable an environment, there is an organism adapted to live there.

Scientists have found life in every extreme environment you can imagine, from volcanic cauldrons to highly alkaline seas. These extremophiles are not just curiosities; they could show us how life might exist on other planets with more hostile conditions than Earth.

Some have led to innovations in materials science, pharmacology and energy generation. Here we look at four organisms that live in conditions that would kill most other forms of life and learn what they could teach us.