Hydrothermal vent deep ocean

An especially intriguing pair of products obtained from marine organisms in recent years are Vent and Deep Vent DNA polymerase. These products are used in DNA research studies. Their special feature is that they are at least 10 times as efficient as other similar products in polymerase chain reactions because they can tolerate temperatures just below the boiling point of water, a characteristic that comparable research tools lack. Vent and Deep Vent DNA polymerases are obtained from the bacterium Thermococcus litoralis, which is found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean. 

Severmann S, Johnson CM, Beard BL, German CR, Edmonds HN, Chiba H, Green DRH (2004) The effect of plume processes on the Fe isotope composition of hydrothermally derived Fe in the deep ocean as inferred from the Rainbow vent site. Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 36° 4 N, Earth Planet Sci Lett 225 63-76... 

Hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, in deep zones of the oceans, are rich in microorganisms, mollusks, and worms, but without other forms of life that characterize the coasts (in particular photosynthetic organisms and their symbionts) and seamounts. 

Figure 6.2 Hydrothermal vents are cracks in the Earth s surface generally found within deep ocean waters. Hot magma enters the cracks and heats the icy water, allowing bacteria to grow and feed a vast array of marine life.

Hydrothermal Vents. Voyage to the Deep. University of Delaware College of Marine Studies and Sea Grant College Program. Available online. URL http //www.ocean.udel.edu/deepsea/ level-2/geology/vents.html. Accessed Dec. 17, 2006. 

In the absence of oxygen and in the presence of H2, reduced carbon is thermodynamically preferred. That is certainly true deep in the ocean, for example, near hydrothermal vents, where the synthesis of reduced organic compounds is thermodynamically favored. Shock, Cody, and others have exploited that fact to propose net synthesis of organic molecules in anoxic environments.14,15... 

Trace metals with scavenged-type distributions have strong interactions with particles and short oceanic residence times (—100-1,000 yr), residence times that are less than the ventilation or mixing time of the oceans. Their concentrations tend to be maximal near major sources such as rivers, atmospheric dust, bottom sediments, and hydrothermal vents. Concentrations decrease with distance from the sources and, in general, the concentrations of the scavenged metals tend to decrease along the flow path of deep water due to continual particle scavenging. 

Deep-sea vents have only been studied in the late twentieth century, so there is still much to learn in terms of their global contribution because of their inaccessibility. However, they can affect global fluxes, and some estimates would suggest that warm ridge-flank sites may remove each year, as much as 35% of the riverine flux of sulfur to the oceans (Wheat and Mottl, 2000). The hydrothermal vents are locally important sources of sulfide-containing materials. The black smokers yield polymetal sulfides, that will... 

One place where life either began or at least spent its formative years is in deep-oceanic, hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents are of a number of types, but the most spectacular are "black smokers," where mineral-laden, superheated water is discharged into cold ocean floor water creating a black, sulfide-rich,... 

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