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> This reminded me of a friend of mine in South Africa who once showed me photos of living organisms that they collected from rocks almost 2km deep - that owed their existence to uranium.

How? Did you they live off radiation?

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I don't know anything about these microbes in particular, but some bacteria can use metals, even uranium, as electron acceptors for growth. Two well-studied examples are Geobacter metallireducens and Shewanella oneidensis.

You can find some info here http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2900/life-is-lonely-at-... D. audaxviator survives in a habitat where it gets its energy not from the sun but from hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive decay of uranium. A lot of research at the time my friend was working was not published as some of these organisms could produce gold as a metabolic product. True alchemists!

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