Some like it hotter
By John Travis
From Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology
A microbe found where volcanic activity has cracked the floor of the Pacific Ocean has set a new record for the upper temperature limit for life. This organism grows readily at 121C in the laboratory and can even survive a few hours at 130C, Kazem Kashefi of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and his colleagues report. The previous record was held by a microbe that could grow at a temperature of 113C.