Does anything survive in the Dead Sea?

Question

I know this might be a stupid question... but are there any kinds of plants or animals that live in the Dead Sea?

Answer 1

Salt preserves dead fishes and meat. So I think that nothing can survive in such a salted water.

Answer 2

There are probably small organisms living in the Dead Sea, but I'm not sure. Most people would think it's unlikely.

Answer 3

Nope, because of the high salt content. I went to Seattle to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they said that the salt keeps even amoebas from living. That's why it is called The Dead Sea.

Answer 4

here is your answer.

Answer 5

HOW can a living creature survive in the Dead Sea, the saltiest body of water on Earth? The trick, says a team of Israeli researchers, is for its proteins to hold on to a protective covering of water. This keeps the protein dissolved in the cytoplasm, which is itself about ten times as salty as that of cells that do not live in salty surroundings.

The organism in question is the bacterium Haloarcula marismortui, one of only two species of bacteria that live in the Dead Sea. The researchers focused on ferredoxin, a protein that helps transfer electrons in the cell's energy-producing processes. Haloarcula's ferredoxin stays in solution, the researchers suggest, by gaining as much negative charge as it can without disturbing its essential structure.

Felix Frolow at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Moshe Mevarech of Tel Aviv University and Menachem Shoham of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, analysed the protein's structure and report their results in Nature Structural Biology (vol 3, p 452). They point out that for a protein to function in a supersaturated salt environment, it has to compete successfully with salt and other inorganic molecules for available water in order to stay in solution in the cytoplasm. If it precipitates it becomes useless.

Using X-ray crystallography, the researchers found that the surface of Haloarcula's ferredoxin is more negatively charged than that of any other protein known to molecular biologists. It also carries an extra appendage—which equivalent ferredoxin proteins found in other bacteria and plants do not have—with an equally strong negative charge. This increases the molecule's surface area. The net effect is to attract water molecules, which shield the protein from the harsh environment in which the bacterium lives.