Life Sciences Commons^™

Characterization Of Aerobic Respiration In Great Basin Hot Springs, Caitlin N. Murphy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Despite a wide diversity of possible electron donors available to fuel chemolithotrophy, it has been proposed that hydrogen is the single most important electron donor in geothermal ecosystems. To directly test this hypothesis, a simple system was devised to determine whether microorganisms in hot spring water and sediment are capable of using hydrogen and other electron donors for aerobic respiration using microrespirometry. The protocol for these experiments was developed using pure cultures of Thermocrinis ruber to determine the effect of growth conditions on the rate of oxygen consumption following the addition of electron donors. For field experiments, samples were collected …