Washington, October 3 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have found that a minute organism can digest ammonia, which suggests that it plays a more central role in the planet’s ecology than previously suspected.

A few years ago, University of Washington researchers cultured a tiny organism from the bottom of a Seattle Aquarium tank and found it can digest ammonia, a key environmental function.

Now, the findings show that these microorganisms, members of ancient lineage called archaea, beat out all other marine life in the race for ammonia.

Ecologists now assume that ammonia in the upper ocean will first be gobbled up by phytoplankton to make new cells, leaving very little ammonia for microbes to turn into nitrate.

“Our data suggests that it’s the other way around,” said co-author Willm Martens-Habbena, a UW postdoctoral researcher.

“Archaea are capable of stealing the ammonia from other organisms and turning it into nitrate. Then it’s the phytoplankton that take up that nitrate once again,” he added.

Ammonia is a waste product that can be toxic to animals. But plants, including phytoplankton, prize ammonia as the most energy-efficient way to build new cells.

The new research paper also shows that archaea can scavenge nitrogen-containing ammonia in the most barren environments of the deep sea, solving a long-running mystery of how the microorganisms can survive in that environment.

New experiments show that the organism can survive on a mere whiff of ammonia - 10 nanomolar concentration, equivalent to a teaspoon of ammonia salt in 10 million gallons of water.

In the deep ocean, there is no light and little carbon, so this trace amount of ammonia is the organism’s only source of energy.

“What Willm’s work has shown is that these archaea can grow at the vanishingly low concentrations of ammonia found in the ocean,” said co-author David Stahl, a UW professor with appointments in the departments of civil and environmental engineering and microbiology.

“Until we made the measurements, no one thought it would be possible that an organism could live on these trace amounts of ammonia as a primary energy source,” he added.

Archaea therefore not only play a role, but are central to the planetary nitrogen cycles on which all life depends. (ANI)