I recently learned that RNase A enzymes can survive autoclaving, or high-pressure heating, at 121°C. This is strange. But then I learned there are entire organisms that not only survive autoclaving, but actually grow and divide at 121°C??? There was a 2003 paper, for example, where these two scientists took a submarine down to a hydrothermal vent in the Pacific ocean, scooped up some dirt, and kept everything in an airtight tube. This tube had an organism in it. The organism had features "typical of Archaea." They put this organism into an autoclave (held at 121°C) for a full 24 hours. When they took it out of the autoclave, the cell population had doubled. Thus, the organism was called "Strain 121." The 2003 paper ends with an enticing statement: "The factors that permit strain 121 to grow at such high temperatures are unknown. It is generally assumed that the upper temperature limit for life is related to the instability of key molecules essential for life, but which molecules are most important in defining the upper temperature limit have not been defined. However, strain 121 offers the possibility to do this work." I read this and got excited. I began searching for follow-up studies on Strain 121. But I was quickly disappointed. This organism has its own Wikipedia page, but every single reference is from 2003 or 2004. Its name was later changed to Geogemma barossii, so I searched for that, too. But all I could find were random news stories about this "heat-loving microbe," all of which linked back to the original 2003 paper. I'm extremely confused by this. Why is nobody studying this microbe? It doesn't even have a published genome sequence. Where is the intellectual center for hyperthermophile research?

It is by studying non-model organisms that biotechnologists have, historically, found the most useful tools. Taq polymerase and CRISPR were both discovered in weird extremophiles. GFP was first isolated from jellyfish caught off the coast of Friday Harbor, Washington. Luciferase came from the North American firefly. Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant used in organ transplants, came from Easter Island soil microbes. Many more useful discoveries are surely awaiting, if only we could grow the many lifeforms that nobody has yet studied in any meaningful way. For my latest @AsimovPress column, I explain how @CultivariumFRX developed a robot that can transform (or get DNA into) all kinds of new, non-model microbes, thus expanding the slice of nature we can study in the laboratory. I think it could be a really big deal for biology.