Water is necessary for life, yet life persists in even the most extreme arid environments. In the Atacama Desert of Chile, the driest non-polar region on Earth, colonies of endolithic microbes marble the rocks, impervious to the deadly low humidity levels. The only way for these endoliths to survive in the Atacama is to extract water from the rocks in which they live. Their mechanisms of water uptake, however, are poorly understood. David Kisailus from the University of California Irvine, USA, and colleagues, grew a cyanobacterium isolated from the Atacama Desert on gypsum. Read More