extremophile

When you can do that, you're called an extremophile.

Organisms that can survive in this suspended, or anabiotic, state, Yarzábal explained, include not just extremophile bacteria but also viruses, fungi, protozoa and microscopic animals called nematodes.

But it won’t arrive until 2031 and that’s only one icy world that could be home to life — most recently, it was reported that Miranda, a moon of Uranus, might be another candidate for extremophile life that can flourish under intense cold.

For the three microorganisms that gene sequencing failed to identify because their genetic information wasn't in the available database, proteotyping identified two potentially new types of extremophile bacteria.

These results suggest proteotyping could be a more complete solution for identifying extremophile microorganisms from small biological samples.