Do you Think We Grow Thermophilic Bacteria in Our Kettles?

[jimmydasaint]

Being a regular drinker of strong mugs of tea, I just wondered if it is posible that by heating and re-heating water, we may encourage the selection of mutations that become thermophilic? Pretty ridiculous, but I wondered if anyone has tested this out?

[CharonY]

Hardly so. Most thermophilic bacteria also require a rather high pressure for stabilization. Also there is quite a large physiological jump between the aerobic bacteria you will find and (anaerobic) thermophilic ones.

In other words, the temp changes are too fast, and there is not enough pressure to prevent the the water from boiling.

What one can do, however, is to select for heat resistant strains. That is, having some rich media and keep it at 40-50° maybe.

[jimmydasaint]

Of course, heat resistant strains. I know it is unlikely but I wondered, if left long enough, heat resistant strains would survive the temperature variations?

[Psycho]

No, as hyperthermophilic bacteria have a phospholipid bilayer which will break down above 60 degree centigrade therefore causing them to lysis, any hyperthermophilic archaea that can survive above that temperature due to their glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether monolayers, which don't break down till above 120 degrees, still wouldn't be able to live with the variation in temperature due to the monolayer freezing below 65 degrees.

 

Then of course there is the fact that with the nature of a kettle the concentrations of salt such as CaCO3 would be so great that they would also have to be halotolerant as well, that is if they could exist in the first place.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

So basically what you're saying is that the hypothetical kettle bacteria isn't impossible, it'd just have to evolve via a totally different set of adaptations.

[Psycho]

So basically what you're saying is that the hypothetical kettle bacteria isn't impossible, it'd just have to evolve via a totally different set of adaptations.

 

Presuming the water didn't boil dehydrating it, which could be prevented in some way such as how halotolerant bacteria change their concentrations of chemicals too stop plasmolysis replacing the water with other biochemical analogues such as glycerol. Of course as well as being able to be created and destroyed very quickly which would be very energy intensive it would have too with stand the temperature and pretty much all their internal mechanisms would have too be different.

 

It wouldn't really have any chances of occurring, their are too many extreme factors involved.

[foodchain]

Being a regular drinker of strong mugs of tea, I just wondered if it is posible that by heating and re-heating water, we may encourage the selection of mutations that become thermophilic? Pretty ridiculous, but I wondered if anyone has tested this out?

 

No, but if you are putting raw materials in there you might have some Tardigrada crawling around in your pot. They are pretty buff actually, but don’t happen to be microbes in what you are looking for.

 

As for selection coming on, I would just think that if you were to get a population to survive that environment which is cyclic to some extent more so in a thermodynamic sense, then you might find some change in phenotype, but that might not be due directly to mutation either. Cant bacteria survive harsher environments by becoming some type of a spore?