Yellowstone’s tiny jewels

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Yellowstone’s unique collection of geothermal features attracted about 100 of the world’s top geothermal scientists for a three-day conference this weekend.

“For microbes, Yellowstone is a treasure trove of diversity,” said Matt Kane, of the National Science Foundation. “It’s really the jewel in the crown of microbial habitats.”

The tiny organisms that survive in some of the planet’s harshest environments provide tantalizing clues about the origins life on Earth, and the possibility of life on other planets, and offer a dizzying array of implications for advancements in medicine, reducing pollution and even growing fruits and vegetables in warming climates.

One estimate says that less than 1 percent of Yellowstone’s microbial life has been explored. Some quibble with that figure, but it’s nonetheless an indication of the vast number of discoveries waiting to be made.

There used to be only a few researchers interested in Yellowstone’s heat-loving critters. Today, about 20 percent of the park’s 200 or so annual research permits involve geothermal work.

“It attracts people interested in different things,” said Bill Inskeep, director of the Research Coordination Network at Montana State University. Inskeep is a geochemist and organizer of the conference, the third since 2003.

Much of the work focuses on understanding how the microbes – millions could be scooped up in a spoonful of water – survive in an environment that can be hot, acidic and sometimes lacking in oxygen.

“These microbes are living in a world that’s beyond harsh,” said Tim McDermott, microbiologist at MSU. “It’s just nasty – and they’re thriving in it.”

Some came to the conference at Mammoth Hot Springs to share what they’d learned about what’s living on the hot-water vents on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. Others have studied how much arsenic, fluoride and other geothermally influenced agents flow into the Firehole River.

Since the early 1990s, interest in Yellowstone’s bizarre superhot systems, and the tiny organisms that survive in them, has intensified. Ever-improving technology to explore and understand them has also paved the way for new discoveries.

One bacterium has shown effectiveness in consuming carbon dioxide coming out the smokestacks of a coal-fired power plant. Another offers a way to extract more oil from played-out wells. NASA researchers are looking at Yellowstone microbes to learn about what life might have been on Mars in a similarly harsh environment.

“There are so many ‘gee whiz’ moments,” said John Varley, director of the Big Sky Institute at MSU and the former top scientist at Yellowstone.

The National Park Service is in the midst of finalizing a plan to govern how the agency should benefit from discoveries in Yellowstone that lead to commercial applications.

Park officials have said there’s a way to preserve Yellowstone’s sensitive resources while allowing what’s learned from microbial discoveries to be used commercially, whether it’s through industry or emerging biomedical research.

“This is the research that has the potential to change people’s lives,” said Tom Oliff, head of the Yellowstone Center for Resources.