Looking for life's (lower) limits
Monday, February 6, 2017 - 17:21
in Biology & Nature
Just how little energy life needs to survive is the subject of a new study. By analyzing maintenance budgets and cellular processes across species and sizes of bacteria, researchers found distinct trends along the spectrum and one surprising constant. Their investigation into the lower bound of energy required for life helps us understand ecological constraints on other planetary bodies in our solar system as well as our own.