I doubt sulfur could replace oxygen there. I’m not a biochemist, though. Also, I’m pretty sure that’s way too cold to sustain life…
there are sulfur respiring bacteria on earth and photosynthesis does not use the oxygen in water so photosynthesizers would still make glucose if they were carbon based and as long as there were lipids and RNA being made on that planet(most likely in the hydrothermal vents where the H2S can be a liquid and much warmer) life could still form and all it would take is one blob to form and in a few million years the planet would have prokaryotes like the ones before eukaryotes existed but much different and H2S is a polar molecule
if that is not what you meant then please say what you meant
Oxygen is a part of nearly every biological molecule. Though you do make a pretty good point, I agree that if they still have a source of oxygen (maybe metal oxides) that life could form.
they would likely get it from food or eating ice
I heard what some bacteria live on power lines and feed on electricity
Source? That seems quite implausible as being on a single power line means current is not running through you at all (which is why birds are safe sitting on power lines).
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i’m pretty sure that they are actually talking about power line bacteria which are bacteria that conduct electricity over a long distance. they do not actually live on power lines
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I suppose I didn’t understood it wright
It’s a bit suspicious that that Wikipedia page lists just two news articles as sources and no scientific papers at all.
Also it sounds like it is a variant of iron eating " Instead, electric bacteria “breathe” metals instead of oxygen, which effectively results in both an intake of and excretion of electrical charges" at least kind of.
That just basically says that the bacteria due to lack of oxygen can’t use oxygen byproducts to emit their “respiration” instead they eject small electric charges.
I fail to see how this is relevant for generating large electric currents that could zap other things under water or how the emitted charges (which presumably are like waste to the bacteria) could get used / amplified by other bacteria.
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with large amounts of energy generated through the electrotrophic organelles you could have wires connecting several cells to generate as much electricity as an electric eel with fewer cells dedicated to the task and likely opening up several more playstyles (examples include: eating gold and using your waste electricity to attack predators, eating silver and using the electricity from it to attack your prey that you eat for it’s nutrients and not it’s energy, etc)
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Explain. This is starting to get to underwater civs level of bad argumentation where you just bring up one point after another without any sources to back them up.
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the cells require an object to discharge the electricity so they have nanowires allowing the electrons to exit them and the organism has cells to bundle up these nanowires and can either discharge electricity into it’s environment or another organism
If your next post doesn’t contain sources, I’m going to give you a warning because this is Science! not Future Game category.
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Okay, fine, you live for now. But I’ll exit the conversation as I don’t have enough mental energy left to read that.
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So here is a question. Earth has H2 O based life, where photosynthesis and respiration balance C O2 and O2, all 3 of which contain Oxygen. Ammonia is N H3, so, would plants and animals on a world with ammonia oceans use Cyanogen (C2 N2) and Nitrogen Gas instead of Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen? Or is the fact that Water and the two arguably most important gasses in our planets life cycle all contain 1 related gas a coincidence?
Edit: I found my answer. They are unrelated.
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Is cyanogen common enough to serve as the CO2 equivalent in such an environment?
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Animals on Earth breath in Oxygen and breath out CO2. Plants use CO2, along with water and sunlight, and produce glucose and Oxygen. There is a balance between the 2 (plants and animals) and, theoretically, on other planets, this balance could involve 2 different gasses altogether. I have wondered for some time if the fact that water has oxygen in it is in part responsible for why our planet use those 2 specific gasses, but, I have no idea. That was half the point of asking. On OUR planet, it isn’t very common, but on a planet where the seas were a hydrogen/nitrogen liquid compound instead of a hydrogen/oxygen liquid compound, would Cyanogen possible be more prevalent? Or would the two have nothing to do with each other? How would life born in a liquid other than water be different, and under what circumstance would life breath different gasses than we do, and are those related at all?
Edit: While searching for something else altogether, I stumbled upon Wikipedia’s page for “Hypothetical types of biochemistry”, and was surprised by the lack of suggestions of alternative respiration. So I attempted to look into it, and, after finally finding something that wasn’t related to exercise respiration, I found the disappointing answer that due to the properties of “Electron Transport Chains”, it appears to be widely accepted that even hypothetical macroscopic life requires oxygen to breath. Incredibly disappointing.
However, upon further research, I was surprised to discover that “Iron Eating” is not only considered a form of Anaerobic Respiration, but according to Wikipedia, if I read it correctly, “Dissimilatory metal-reducing microorganisms” that utilize Rusticyanin have 91.46% of the Redux Potential of Aerobic Respiration, which, if I am understanding that correctly, would mean Thrive’s Ferroplasts would be even better.
So, if I am understanding this correctly, could Ferroplast users conceivably evolve to sentience in an oxygen-less environment? For that matter, could not Rusticyanin users? Or am I misunderstanding the relationship between Redux Potential and Electron Transport Chains?
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This could make for a good balance in the game assuming that the iron eaters have to spend some time finding the metal they eat.
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Hey, actually the electron transport chain is not limited to oxygen! Oxygen merely acts as a final electron acceptor for driving the synthesis of NADH for ATP. There are already plenty of bacteria that use inorganic compounds as electron acceptors (Look up chemolithotrophs). Popular examples would be purple sulfur bacteria and iron reducers/oxidizers. However, I do not think these have been documented in eukaryotes, especially in multicellular organisms.
I am not very familiar with the morphology of such organisms. The ferroplast is quite new to me, I am not entirely sure if this is fictional since from what I recall from my studies, there are currently 4 existing endosymbiotic organelles (with the newest one being the nitroplast iirc). But I digress, what I am trying to say is that the existence of an ETC utilizing other inorganic elements instead of oxygen is not the problem. The problem would be making enough energy to power a multicellular organism.
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