Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
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While performing routine maintenance on the Large Lake Observatory’s R/V Blue Heron, a marine superintendent found a mysterious goo.
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Microbial biologists at the University of Minnesota Duluth found that the goo was a new species of archaea that thrived in the semi-warm and anaerobic environment of the ship’s rudder housing.
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The scientists plan to release the genome of this new species to the public and publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal in the near future.
Typically in Hollywood movies—no matter the genre—mysterious black goo isn’t a good thing. The 1992 animated film FernGully: The Last Rainforest? Evil black goo. The Alien franchise prequel Prometheus? Evil black goo. Basically the entire 2018 Marvel film Venom is about evil black goo. The trope is everywhere, and it almost always portends ill fortune.
Luckily, when Doug Ricketts—Marine Superintendent at the Large Lake Observatory (LLO)—found a mysterious black goo tucked away in the R/V Blue Heron’s rudder shaft during some routine maintenance, he disregarded these cultural warnings and brought a cup of the substance to researchers at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). The sample eventually received the name “ShipGoo001” by LOO and UMD researcher Cody Sheik, who discovered that the mysterious substance actually contained microbial species unknown to science.
“The biggest surprise was that the ship goo had life in it at all,” Sheik said in a press statement. “We thought we’d find nothing. But surprisingly, we found DNA and it wasn’t too destroyed, nor was the biomass too low.”
It turns out that the rudder shaft of the Blue Heron provided the perfect habitat for a particular kind of archaea that prefers a semi-warm, stable environment with no oxygen. One big head-scratcher is how these anaerobic creatures got into the ship—which, after all, sails the oxygenated waters of the Great Lakes. Sheik’s current theory is that the microbes could’ve lain dormant in an oil used to grease the rudder and simply waited for the perfect conditions to proliferate.
Amazingly, the research team reconstructed 20 genomes from the goo. They then compared those genomes to a database of previously identified organisms, and according to Popular Science, one of the species represents an entire new order of archaea, while another might represent a new bacterial phylum. The team plans to make these genomes available to the public, as well as publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal in the near future.
This isn’t just a novel discovery. Some of the organisms appear to produce methane, which could be used in the production of biofuels. But the find shows that science often overlooks how the natural world interacts with human-made infrastructure. Sheik even mentions that he’s explored extreme environments like hydrothermal vents or hot springs, but not so much ship rudder housings and other artificial structures. “ShipGoo001” is also a living, anaerobic testament to what can happen when scientists are allowed to explore their inherent curiosities.
“Scientists don’t often have time to be playful—we’re focused and have projects to complete,” Sheik said in a press statement. “Time and resources for exploratory work can be daunting. But this shows why it matters.”
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