Microbiology: Relatives on Jupiter

While touring Harlech Castle in Wales, U.S. Physiologist Sanford Siegel found a wallside spot that had been often used as an open-air urinal. Not everyone would react the same way, but it made Siegel think of his job—studying what organisms survive in hostile environments. After scooping up some well-urinated and therefore ammonia-rich earth, he conscientiously lugged it back to his lab at the Union Carbide Research Institute in Tarrytown, N.Y. What he stumbled on, writes Siegel in Science, was a microorganism that may be the living descendant of a recently discovered microfossil...

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