A single-celled blob living in a California hot spring has smashed a heat tolerance record for an entire domain of life.
The newly described “fire amoeba” can grow at 63° Celsius (145° Fahrenheit), a temperature that’s fatal to all other known eukaryotes, researchers report September 22 in Cell . Eukaryotes include all life-forms with nuclei and organelles, such as plants, fungi and animals.
Little was known about the genetic adaptations of microbial eukaryotes that live in extreme environments. From 2023 to 2025, microbiologist Beryl Rappaport and her colleagues brought water samples from geothermal hot springs in California’s Lassen Volcanic…
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