The “Escalón Cave”, located in the Asón Valley (Cantabria) has been revealed as a treasure of microbial biodiversity, in which the biofilms that cover the walls of this cavity, show a complex and varied tapestry of cyanobacteria, many of them little known and that they are currently being investigated.
In this context, the space agency Astroland has installed an operations center, the "Ares Station”, inside the same cave. These facilities are respectful of the environment in which they are located, and from where part of their program of activities is carried out, including an interesting astrobiology program, in which different protocols related to microbiological research and the appearance of life on our planet, or the search for signs of life on Mars.
The Ares Station is an operational work and research center that aims to recreate an environment analogous to that of Mars in the cavities that exist on this planet.
Some of the cyanobacteria that live as part of the biofilm that covers the walls of the cave, like Gloeobacter, are very interesting and can help to understand what photosynthetic organisms have been able to evolve, perhaps since those that the red planet had seas like those of the Earth and the first brushstrokes of life of colors, they were brushstrokes of gelatine, perhaps also violet and pink gelatine, like the one’s masses of these cyanobacteria investigated in this project, using for it the Motic Panthera microscope, equipped with an epifluorescence illumination module.
The cyanobacterium Gloeobacter violaceus has one of the most complex photosynthetic apparatus primitives that is known, probably the ancestor of all the photosynthetic apparatus of all the green organisms that inhabit our planet today.
Gloeobacter violaceus thus recalls, sheltered in a humid and gloomy cave, the time of an origin in which the world was uninhabitable, and in which forms like it took the first steps opening the path of life.
It is a living and unique treasure that grows sheltered from the wind, pink or violet-like an amethyst when it grows in mass.
Internally it shows a unique ancestral cell organization, an uncommon structure of the photosynthetic apparatus characterized by a complete absence of internal membranes (thylakoids). The phylogenetic investigations that have been carried out to date with this organism, whose genetic material has been completely sequenced, demonstrate its basal position among all organisms with organelles capable of photosynthesis.
"Gloeobacter violaceus" has become one of the key species in the evolutionary study of photosynthetic life. It is also among the most widely used organisms in experimental photosynthesis research.
The individuals of "Gloeobacter violaceus" are formed by solitary cells or aggregated in irregular groups, broadly oval or rod-shaped, and surrounded by delimited and narrow gelatinous envelopes, which contain one or more cells, and whose ends generally present a granular structure. Cells are not mobile and cell division is carried out by simple binary transverse fission, perpendicular to the long axis of the cell. Reproduction is probably by the release of single enveloped cells or small groups of cells.
The forms that give rise to the purple gelatines are wider and present a stratified mucilaginous envelope in several layers, these, which we photograph here today, with the Motic Panthera microscope, present a much more elongated and narrow body and are only enveloped in a gelatine layer, barely perceptible and not stratified.
It is unknown if these elongated forms of the pink jellies correspond to a phase of the life cycle of those that grow in amethyst jellies or if it is a genetic variant of them. In any case, their biological interest is undeniable due to the extraordinary efficiency with which they can carry out photosynthesis practically in the absence of light for our eyes.
It is striking how these samples observed today and collected at the end of June 2021 continue to maintain vital and photosynthetic activity after remaining in a cold room for almost six months.
Gloeobacter violaceus is a treasure. From "Proyecto Agua" - a scientific and informative project that tries to make known the world of the microscopic through a Flickr gallery (https://www.flickr.com/photos/microagua/) it has been found and documented for the first time in the Iberian territory.
It is a species that is hardly known until now from any other locality in the Swiss Alps and Mexico. It is truly a unique soft living fossil, valuable as the most valuable of treasures to understand how photosynthetic organisms began to take the first steps on our planet and made life possible for others, including ours.
Gloeobacter violaceus lives in conditions of very little light and high humidity on the limestone walls of the caves, on which it forms a film of irregular thickness, gelatinous consistency, and varied color that ranges between pink, violet, and amethyst. With its forms of light in its soft galaxies, it transports us to the past, to the lost times in which the life of the Planet began to shine as these cyanobacteria do today, a soft jewel of amethyst.
The images taken with the Motic Panthera equipment with the x40 and x100 lenses and the epifluorescence module (Images 4, 6, and 7) allow us to perfectly distinguish the contours of these cyanobacteria that emit an intense yellow fluorescence, which is very characteristic. It is striking how, with the bright field technique taken with the same equipment and the same objectives (Image 5), these organisms are practically unrecognizable in the gelatinous mass in which they live.
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