Israeli scientists have made a new breakthrough in the study of tiny, resilient organisms called hyperthermophiles — which have learned to survive in some of the earth’s hottest places, such as volcanic craters and underwater hot springs — by developing the first comprehensive, large-scale method to examine the organisms.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science show in a new peer-reviewed study that, contrary to popular scientific belief, the hyperthermophiles — whose name derives from the Latin for “lovers of extreme heat” — can modify their own RNA molecules at the core of their ribosomes, where cells manufacture protein, to adapt to extreme heat and survive.

“The hyperthermophile completely changes its chemical composition depending on different environments,” said Prof. Schraga Schwartz of Weizmann’s Molecular Genetics Department, speaking to The Times of Israel.

The research, led by Dr. Miguel A. Garcia-Campos, “goes a bit against the notion that fundamental processes inside the ribosome are fixed,” Schwartz said.

Participating in the study, which recently appeared in the prestigious journal Cell, were researchers from the National Cancer Institute, Jagiellonian University in Poland, and Tokyo Metropolitan University.

The findings may enable further development of RNA-based medical and industrial technologies.

The ribosome is one of the earliest and most basic biological structures. It is transcribed into RNA, Schwartz explained.

“It’s the basic document of molecular biology,” he said. “Plants, humans, butterflies, bacteria — every single one of us has a full code for the RNA to build the........

© The Times of Israel