{"id":326481,"date":"2025-12-02T18:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326481\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T18:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:19:12","slug":"fire-amoeba-survives-in-hotter-conditions-than-any-other-complex-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326481\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fire amoeba\u2019 survives in hotter conditions than any other complex cell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Steam rises over the Bumpass Hell area in Lassen Volcanic National Park.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/d41586-025-03933-5_51778194.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Hot springs at at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, where the heat-tolerant amoeba was discovered.Credit: Kelly Vandellen\/iStock via Getty<\/p>\n<p>This cell likes it hot. A tiny, single-celled amoeba that can thrive at temperatures that kill all other known complex life \u2014 organisms whose cells contain a nucleus and internal structures \u2014 has been found.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery questions the notion that such \u2018eukaryotic\u2019 life \u2014 which includes all animals and plants \u2014 is not suited to the kind of extreme conditions that can be tolerated by bacteria and other organisms lacking a cell nucleus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to rethink what\u2019s possible for a eukaryotic cell in a significant way,\u201d says Angela Oliverio, a microbiologist at Syracuse University in New York. The work, which has not yet been peer reviewed, was described in a preprint<a href=\"#ref-CR1\" data-track=\"click\" data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track-category=\"references\">1<\/a> published on 24 November.<\/p>\n<p>Oliverio and fellow Syracuse microbiologist Beryl Rappaport were part of a team that discovered the organism at Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California\u2019s Cascade mountain range. They named it Incendiamoeba cascadensis, which translates to \u2018fire amoeba from the cascades\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Animated sequence from footage of a single I. cascadensis in its amoebiform state.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/d41586-025-03933-5_51778192.gif\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Incendiamoeba cascadensis can thrive at temperatures that would kill other complex cells.Credit: Image taken by Natalie Petek-Seoane from the preprint by H. Beryl Rappaport et al.\/bioRxiv<\/p>\n<p>The park is famous for gurgling acid lakes and incandescent geothermal pools, but I. cascadensis comes from a pH-neutral \u2018hot stream\u2019. \u201cIt\u2019s the most uninteresting geothermal feature you\u2019ll find in Lassen,\u201d says Rappaport.<\/p>\n<p>Water samples from the stream looked devoid of life under a microscope, but after culturing them with nutrients, the researchers spotted the amoeba growing at 57 \u00b0C, within the stream\u2019s temperature range. The scientists slowly raised the temperature, sailing past the previous eukaryote record of 60 \u00b0C. I. cascadensis was still able to divide at 63 \u00b0C and was still moving around at 64 \u00b0C. Even at 70 \u00b0C, the cells could form dormant \u2018cysts\u2019 that were capable of reactivating at cooler temperatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hot springs at at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, where the heat-tolerant amoeba was discovered.Credit: Kelly Vandellen\/iStock&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1159,21730,1160,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-326481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","9":"tag-microbiology","10":"tag-multidisciplinary","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}