Discovery of a Bacterium that Converts Light into Energy

A new discovery is unraveled at Yellowstone National Park as they have detected a bacterium that can convert light into energy. Till today it was only plants that had the capacity to convert the light into energy via photosynthesis, but now even some bacteria has that potential although the arrangement, machinery, and the system is different.

This discovery was made in a hot spring at the park where colorful mats of microbes drift in the warmth. The study on how this conversion is taking place in the bacteria is going on. The name of this bacterium is candidatus chloracidobacterium thermophilum.

"Finding a previously unknown, chlorophyll-producing microbe is the discovery of a lifetime. I wouldn't have been as excited if I had reached into that mat and pulled out a gold nugget the size of my fist" states the co-author Don Bryant, a professor of biotechnology at Penn State University.