What is the difference between thermophiles and extreme thermophiles?
There’s a pretty superficial delineation between thermophiles and extreme thermophiles or they’re called “hyperthermophiles.” A thermophile is an organism that grows between 45 and about 80 degrees Celsius. A hyperthermophile is an organism that grows best above 80 degrees Celsius. So T. ruber would be referred to as a hyperthermophile whereas the black filaments that we work with in Yellowstone grows best at 70 degrees so it is actually a thermophile. What did you do with the samples you collected before and what do you do with them now? Until fairly recently probably about 20 years ago, the only way that we could identify a microbe is [by looking] under the microscope. You see this community of organisms, you see a little blob and a little rod and a little blob and another little rod and a little blob. How do you distinguish between organisms that have no physical shape differences. The only way that we could do that until very recently was to try and grow those organisms from the en
