#Microbes could survive on planets with all-hydrogen #atmospheres - ABC News
▻https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/microbes-survive-planets-hydrogen-atmospheres/story?id=70581628
In the new study, researchers investigated how well two different kinds of microbes grew in the lab in 100% hydrogen: the bacterium E. coli, which lacks a nucleus, and yeast, which has one. Although neither microorganism normally lives in environments dominated by hydrogen, the scientists found both could reproduce, switching from their preferred oxygen-consuming metabolism to less efficient anaerobic processes.
Their growth rates were slower in hydrogen atmospheres, perhaps due to the lack of energy the microbes would normally get from oxygen. E. coli reached numbers roughly half those they would have in regular air, and yeast was hundreds of times less abundant than it would otherwise have been.