This is pretty cool to see…

Bhattacharya says that in other extremophiles, their genomes have become more compact. "It's called genome streamlining," he says, "so they can then compete with bacteria which have smaller genomes and live in these harsh environments."

This isn't the case with the fire amoeba, which has a larger genome than its relatives. "It's taken a different path," says Bhattacharya, "so I think that's really interesting."