A Breath of Fresh Air!
Oxygen Tolerance in Bacteria

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Background
Lake Bonney, in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, is divided into two lobes. Both lobes are approximately 40m deep and are permanently covered with 4m of ice. A sill, 13m deep, separates the two lobes. Though both lobes of the lake contain bacterial populations of denitrifying bacteria, the process of denitrification occurs only in the west lobe. Investigations into the reasons for this phenomenon are on-going. Could this anomaly be related to oxygen levels?

Resources and Reference Materials
Any general microbiology text such as: Brock Biology of Microorganisms. Eighth edition. Michael T. Madigan, John M. Martinko, and Jack Parker. Prentice hall, 1997.

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