Peter A. Ensminger
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300088045
- eISBN:
- 9780300133523
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300088045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Climate
Which fungus is as sensitive to light as the human eye? What are the myths and facts about the ozone hole, tanning, skin cancer, and sunscreens? What effect does light have on butterfly copulation? ...
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Which fungus is as sensitive to light as the human eye? What are the myths and facts about the ozone hole, tanning, skin cancer, and sunscreens? What effect does light have on butterfly copulation? This book explores how various organisms—including archaebacteria, slime molds, fungi, plants, insects, and humans—sense and respond to sunlight. The chapters cover vision, photosynthesis, and phototropism, as well as such unusual topics as the reason that light causes beer to develop a “skunky” odor. The book introduces us to the types of eyes that have evolved in different animals, including those in a species of shrimp that is ostensibly eyeless; the book gives us a better appreciation of color vision; explains how plowing fields at night may be used to control weeds; and tells us about variegate porphyria, a metabolic disease that makes people very sensitive to sunlight and that may have afflicted King George III of England.Less
Which fungus is as sensitive to light as the human eye? What are the myths and facts about the ozone hole, tanning, skin cancer, and sunscreens? What effect does light have on butterfly copulation? This book explores how various organisms—including archaebacteria, slime molds, fungi, plants, insects, and humans—sense and respond to sunlight. The chapters cover vision, photosynthesis, and phototropism, as well as such unusual topics as the reason that light causes beer to develop a “skunky” odor. The book introduces us to the types of eyes that have evolved in different animals, including those in a species of shrimp that is ostensibly eyeless; the book gives us a better appreciation of color vision; explains how plowing fields at night may be used to control weeds; and tells us about variegate porphyria, a metabolic disease that makes people very sensitive to sunlight and that may have afflicted King George III of England.
Patrick Forterre
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226265827
- eISBN:
- 9780226265964
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226265964.003.0002
- Subject:
- Biology, Microbiology
This chapter starts summarizing how our conception of the living world classification evolved. The concepts of microbes, cells, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses are briefly presented and the ...
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This chapter starts summarizing how our conception of the living world classification evolved. The concepts of microbes, cells, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses are briefly presented and the reasons why life was not expected to be present in hell are explained. The history of hyperthermophile unexpected discovery is then described, starting from the first observations of “vegetation” in hot springs of Yellowstone national park in the nineteen century to the first isolation in 1972 of an actual hyperthermophile in this park, Sulfolobus. Amazingly, this bug turned out to be member of a new domain of life described in 1977 by Carl Woese and George Fox, the archaebacteria (later on called archaea). The concept of archaebacteria led to the rapid discovery new families of hyperthermophiles growing at temperatures up to 110°C by German microbiologists Wolfram Zillig and Karl Stetter during their expeditions in Iceland and Italy. This was followed by the discovery of unique viruses infecting these microbes. The chapter ends with a first description of the origin of life problem and how the discovery of hyperthermophiles suggested new hypotheses favouring at first a hot origin.Less
This chapter starts summarizing how our conception of the living world classification evolved. The concepts of microbes, cells, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses are briefly presented and the reasons why life was not expected to be present in hell are explained. The history of hyperthermophile unexpected discovery is then described, starting from the first observations of “vegetation” in hot springs of Yellowstone national park in the nineteen century to the first isolation in 1972 of an actual hyperthermophile in this park, Sulfolobus. Amazingly, this bug turned out to be member of a new domain of life described in 1977 by Carl Woese and George Fox, the archaebacteria (later on called archaea). The concept of archaebacteria led to the rapid discovery new families of hyperthermophiles growing at temperatures up to 110°C by German microbiologists Wolfram Zillig and Karl Stetter during their expeditions in Iceland and Italy. This was followed by the discovery of unique viruses infecting these microbes. The chapter ends with a first description of the origin of life problem and how the discovery of hyperthermophiles suggested new hypotheses favouring at first a hot origin.
