Human Extremes: Extremophiles And Humanity

Extremophiles and Humanity
The Guinness Book of World records puts the tallest man ever at 2.72 meters tall, clocks the fastest mile at 3 minutes and 43.13 seconds, and weighs in the heaviest baby born at 9.98 kg (n.d.). There are ridiculous records such as fastest 100 m hurdle in swim flippers, most toilet seats broken by a head in one minute, and countless other records that make you wonder how and why people thought of them. Adrenaline junkies chase the high they get from putting their life in danger. Free climbing, base jumping, skydiving; these are the human extremes. People dedicate their life to and are fascinated with seeing how far they can push the human body and mind. We as humans have gotten so “advanced” and comfortable that

Egocentrically, yes there is no doubt that the human extremes aren’t for the average person and what some people can physically and mentally do is impressive, but on a bigger scale, our extremes are not that extreme. We have to use tools outside of ourselves to achieve most of these extremes. The human version of extreme pales in comparison to some of the extremes other organisms encounter and even thrive in. Extremophiles, organisms who call the most extreme environments on earth home, would laugh at our version of going to the extreme. From the depths of the ocean to the peaks of mountains, where extreme is a “norm”, you can find organisms “comfortable” in their homes, breaking the human scale of extreme, and they do all of this with internal “tools”. While we may not be able to withstand the environments that the extremophiles survive in we do create extreme environments in industry and medicine and can study and use the extremophiles to make our industrial and medical practices more

An organism that thrives at high pressures is called a piezophile or barophile. These organisms have a waxy cell layer that helps them survive the crushing pressures found below the sea. It has been difficult for studies to be done on such organisms because of the pressure and temperature barrier. A study done on bacteria from the Mariana trench concluded that “much of deep-sea microbiology may have been done with spurious deep-sea organisms due to warming of samples” (Yayanos, Dietz and Boxtel, 1981). The pressure of the deep ocean is incredibly hard to recreate in a