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by Uehreka 2164 days ago
Sounds like a fun HN comment game, let’s go:

Formaldehyde.

2 comments

How about: Hydrogen fluoride. I know there are acidophiles but a concentrated HF solution in water has a H0 of up to -11, surely no membrane (made of proteins) can survive that?
Dunno about HF specifically but there are bacteria living at extremely low pH in highly concentrated acids from mine runoff at Iron Mountain Mine.
Oh nice. Let’s kick it up a notch:

Chlorine Trifluoride.

Probably one of the chlorine-breathing microbes.

Of course, the hard part is discovering the exact microbe that eats a given compound and publishing/finding an exact paper on it, not naming compounds.

Which input sha256s into d4667a67e71436947c7ff89f31379aeb82d2044f74dbad776941fcd91585e318?3

> Which input sha256s into d4667a67e71436947c7ff89f31379aeb82d2044f74dbad776941fcd91585e318

you found me

I feel like the hardest part would be convincing Chlorine Trifluoride to exist long enough for something to eat it, this one may be unfair.

My last request for the night: Enriched Uranium.

Geobacter, Geothrix and Dyella species, as well as a novel—potentially predatory—Bacteroidetes species, and a new member of class Anaerolineae (Chloroflexi). Additionally, a population of methanogenic Methanocella species. [0]

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29128951/

What happens to radiation when they eat it ? Does it go into excretions or does it get incorporated into the bacteria ? (or both ?)
Polyethylene.
They don't identify the bacterium in the article, but waxworm guts contain them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2020/03/09/mysterious-...

Pseudomonas bacteria can break down polyurethane, which is a tougher material than polyethylene: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/03/28/scientists-find-ba...