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Microbiology on Spirit

In the beginning there was no life on planet Spirit. After the cooling period, the environmental conditions of Spirit became stable making possible for the first life to develop. The density of the atmospheric water formed the ocean and microbiological life flourished in the water bodies of this planet. The first life was based on the storage information in the long, complex, carbon chain molecules called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Over the long periods of time, the life form became fit to survive. This life could have begun as a very simple process that steadily became more complex as the atmosphere that consists of water, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide supported it.

We begin our search on planet Spirit where fossils acquaintance with carbon based life give us a glance of the first living matter.


The Environment	Early Life Forms	Development and Adaptation	Reproduction	Senses and Behaviors
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The Environment

The oldest fossils indicated that life began in the oceans. Half a billion years ago, the Spirit's marine environment was certainly not the same as it is today. It is likely that the ocean's chemistry was different, and the configuration of the ocean basins and continents was entirely unlike planet Spirit

http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/ordersoftrilobites.htm today, because of continental drift. The oldest fossils appear in sedimentary rocks in the Pesce bay that formed during the Cambrian period. At that time the atmosphere consisted of water, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Such Cambrian fossils were single celled ocean creatures, which were named Trioguys.

Trioguys were among the most well known of the Paleozoic marine organism, and they have only been found in the ocean. No freshwater forms have ever been found. They occupied many different ocean environments, from shallow flats and reefs, to deeper ocean bottoms, They could be found also in the water column, as floating plankton or free-swimming forms.

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They lived in the tropical equatorial to polar paleolatitudes. Trioguy marine niches ranged from intertidal and near shore to deep continental slopes.

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Early Life Form

On planet Spirit, the physical basis of life is the carbon atom. Because of the way this atom bonds to other atoms, it can form long, complex, stable chains that are capable of extracting, storing, and utilizing energy. Other chemical bases of life may exist.

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In fact, non-chemical life might be possible, which is some mechanism capable of supporting the extraction and utilization of energy that we have identified as life. The unit of life on planet Spirit is the single celled organism, called Trioguy. The Trioguys cells are the building blocks of all multicellular complex organisms. Trioguys carried out the basic functions of life. A set of patterns that describes how it is to function that is stored in the long carbon-chain molecules called deoxyribo nucleic acid (DNA).

The structure of DNA resembles a long, twisted ladder that its rails are made of irregular phosphates and sugars. The rung are made of molecules called bases. This cell is a cell-contained factory that absorbs raw materials from its surroundings and uses them to maintain itself and manufacture finished products for the use of the organism as a whole.

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The formation of Trioguy involved water, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, and adenosine triphosphate. Proteins are large molecules that are made up of amino acids. Proteins have many functions, including regulating chemical reactions, transporting, storing materials, and providing support. The carbohydrates and lipids are used for energy storage, and Lipids help make up Trioguys membranes. While Nucleic acid helps Trioguys store information needed to build more proteins, adenosine triphosphate provides energy for Trioguys’ activities.

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Development and Adaptation

From the first simple life forms on Spirit evolved a variation of other microscopic organisms that have become better adapted to their environment. Trioguris was the largest predator of the early Cambrian seas, an active, swimming, strong-hunter with large eyes-like and grasping anterior, The corkscrew-shaped Spiro Trioguys have an increased surface area with which to absorb materials. They like unusually hot temperatures. A few species have been found to survive even above 110 degrees Celsius (water boils at 100 degrees Celsius).

Some early Trioguy, like Nino, developed the chemical tools to harvest free nitrogen from the air and convert it into forms such as ammonia and nitrate through a process called nitrogen fixation. The catch is that they need sufficient amounts of energy in the form of carbohydrates to power these conversions.

Through the million years that Trioguys existed, there were many opportunities for diversification of form, starting from the presumed primitive morphology demonstrated by a species such as Amigo. This typical primitive morphotype had a small pygidium, well developed eye-like ridges. Among the species of described Trioguys there are species in which aspects of morphology have diverged greatly from the primitive state. Shapes and furrow patterns of the body, and the shape and placement of eyes-like and eye ridges also ranged widely.

Within this diversification, there were a number of evolutionary trends in morphology that developed unrelated forms and shapes, creating homeomorphy (attainment of similar forms in unrelated groups). These homeomorphic trends increased the structured; reduced the body size; streamline shape, and loss of eyes.

This picture below shows a part of the parent pinches off and separates to become a daughter cell. The Amigo organisms are actually a partnership between the Amigo Trioguy, which are not autotrophs, and smaller, photosynthesizing Trioguy that they have engulfed. They have developed a symbiotic relationship with these smaller Trioguy so that materials engulfed by the Amigo Trioguy can be shared, and in turn share in food produced by photosynthesis.

There is certainly a very wide range of body forms associated with Trioguys. There are species (such as the Amigo shown at left) with huge eyes-like and narrow bodies that seem adapted to swimming in the pelagic (open ocean) water column and thrive in unusually salty habitats. Some can thrive in water that's 9% salt; seawater contains only 0.9% salt.

Other species (such as the Whipple, shown at right) were eyeless, with wide bodies and supporting structures such as long flagella on both sides of their body. They use their flagella for movement. One whip from the flagella propels the prokaryote forward in the opposite direction that seems adapted for a dark (ocean bottom) habitat. They like extremely cold temperatures (even down to -10 degrees Celsius).

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Reproduction

How cell division and so tissue growth is controlled is very complex. By any chance mostly Trioguys are pictured here reproducing by binary fission, which is cell divide into two equal parts. Before a cell can divide in a fashion that maintains its integrity and function, it will replicate its contents. The central core of biological memory coded in DNA will be duplicated so that an equivalent copy exists in each strand, producing another DNA. The two copies then be separated from one another in such a way that one copy comes to reside in each daughter cell. To prevent dilution of cell contents, the cell also make copies of all other molecules present and distribute these that occurs in all Trioguys’ cells, with essentially the same mechanisms.

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The separate molecular assemblies will then move through the cytoplasm on directed journeys to the proper daughter cells. This process is mediated by the structural elements of the cell made up of a spiral array of protein molecules around a hollow interior space. Chromosomes contain a special patch of protein where the elements may attach. When enough elements from opposite ends of the cell have attached to the two duplicated members of each chromosome pair, the chromosomes line up in the center, split apart, and the elements begin pulling their attached chromosomes through the cytoplasm to opposite ends of the dividing cell. The movement mechanism seems to involve contraction, expansion, and depolymerization of tubule structures as they pull, much in the fashion of tiny machines.

The Diagram of Cell Reproduction:

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6

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Senses and Behavior

The typical success story of the Cambrian Era is the Trioguys. These organisms were self-contained, self directed, and less dependent for survival. They had evolved to the point where the individual organism had the resources to ensure its own immediate survival: sensing, responding, eating, and mating. The trace fossils of these organisms leave evidence of how Trioguys hunted or fed. The Trioguy would be moving slowly through the upper layers of the ocean floor, as if searching for something, changing direction toward a food tunnel, and then stopping when it presumably intersected with the food.

Though these Trioguys created their own sense, these new self-directed organisms relied on their peers for survival and adaptation. For the direct transmission of data over the biological network, they began developing a new mechanism for transmitting knowledge: imitation. By observing, responding, and mimicking their peer organisms, these creatures could effectively influence each other's senses, experiences, and survived capabilities.

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