Microbial Mats: Primitive Structures That Could Help us Find Life on Other Worlds

Some microscopic organisms grow together to build structures known as microbial mats. These mats are formed from several layers with different colors, and their structure depends on environmental conditions such as sunlight, humidity, and available food. Microbial mats are found in oceans, lakes, and coastal lagoons, as well as in extreme environments like deserts, polar regions, and hot springs. The study of fossils indicates that microbial mats were a common form of life on early Earth, and they have persisted on our planet ever since! Therefore, the study of modern mats helps us to understand microbial life in the past, and how they might help to regulate the Earth’s climate. Scientists believe that microbial mats can prosper on rocky planets like Earth, so they are studying mats in different terrestrial environments to help them to recognize evidence indicating the presence of mats on other worlds.


MICROORGANISMS CAN FORM LARGE STRUCTURES!
Microorganisms are tiny living things that cannot be seen with the naked eye, as most of them are made up of only one cell. We need to use a microscope to see them. They live in and on our bodies, and in our surroundings, including the soil, water, and air. Sometimes microorganisms work together to build big structures that are observable without microscopes. Lichens, for example, look like plants, but they result from an interesting relationship between algae and fungi, which form flakes or leafless branches on trees or rocks. Yogurt, vinegar, cheese, and bread are produced by fermentation processes, which are performed by groups of particular microorganisms. Some plants built small structures called root nodules, where microorganisms can live. Thanks to the microorganisms in these nodules, the plants can obtain more food from the environment and thanks to the plants, the microorganisms have a place to live and a lot of sugar to feed on. Commonly, when your food spoils in the refrigerator, you can observe a layer of microorganisms known as a biofilm growing on it.
BIOFILM A layer of microorganisms that are stuck to one another and stuck to (or floating on) a surface.
In nature, many microorganisms live in the ground. Using soil, water, and minerals these microorganisms can form big, solid structures. When high-quality food is present, some microorganisms can reproduce by the millions, attached to grains of soil or sand, creating structures that look like normal rocks or mud, but that are actually living structures built by multitudes of microscopic organisms. There are di erent types of rocky microbe structures. They have names like microbialites, endoevaporites, oncolites, and stromatolites ( Figure ) [ ]. These structures can have diverse shapes and colors, which are strongly influenced by the environmental conditions present during their formation. Microbial mats are a specific example of a

MICROBIAL MAT
A large structure build by microorganisms, that grow on the top of sediments. It is usually composed by grands of soil, minerals, nutrients, and microbes. structure built by microorganisms.

WHAT ARE MICROBIAL MATS AND WHAT DO THEY DO?
Microorganisms need energy and water to build a microbial mat. Water can be provided by hot springs, lagoons, or a coastal shoreline, and many microorganisms use solar light as their main energy source. With enough energy and water, microorganisms can flourish on a surface, sticking together with food and grains of sand or soil, and building mats that can be up to a few centimeters thick ( Figure C). In some cases, a new living mat grows on top of an older, dead mat, creating thick layers ( Figures G,H). As the name suggests, mats resemble carpets or rugs, in the way that they cover surfaces of various sizes. When seen up close, mats also have interesting vertical layering (Figure ). Microorganisms can be distributed in green, orange, red, and purple layers, with each layer representing a di erent community of microorganisms that needs di erent amounts of sunlight and oxygen ( Figure I) ground, they contribute to the health of soils and sediments, producing nutrients that enrich them. Mats participate in the recycling of some chemical elements, including carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. They can also clean the water and they both take up and release gases from the atmosphere, such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane. Mats are also a food source for animals. Some flies, snails, worms, crabs, and birds feed on small pieces of microbial mats, and larger organisms can then feed on those smaller ones [ ]. Because they are continuously eaten, mats often do not grow much, except in extreme environments .
If you want to explore deeper into microbial mats, watch this video: https://youtu.be /VpCkgvb Ag

MICROBIAL MATS AROUND THE WORLD
Nowadays, microbial mats can be found in tropical coastal lagoons, estuaries, and bays, but they may be di cult to spot because they can only grow large when they have enough food and when they are protected from grazing organisms. However, mats are found extensively in the fossil record, indicating that, billions of years ago,  Figure  even . BYA, long, long before any other forms of life existed. On early Earth, these microbial structures proliferated on rocky or sandy surfaces worldwide. Imagine that! Today, microbial mats usually get eaten by other organisms, but billions of years ago, those higher lifeforms had not yet evolved, so the mats just kept growing! Microbial mats are one of the oldest forms of organized life and the study of today's mats helps scientists to understand their contribution to ecosystems on both modern and early Earth.

FOSSIL RECORD
Geological data and laboratory studies have revealed the importance of microbial mats in the history of Earth. It is believed that, in the past, the abundance and high activity of mats created the atmosphere that we breathe today. Furthermore, as ancient mats released carbon dioxide and methane, they also contributed to the regulation of Earth's climate, helping to create the warm atmosphere that made the Earth a habitable planet [ ].

MATS AS MODELS FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
Microbial mats have been observed in extreme ecosystems, such as in extremely salty areas around coasts and in deserts soils. Also, they can form in the polar regions attached to permafrost, which is soil that never thaws. Mats have been discovered at high temperatures, close to volcanoes and hot springs. They have also been found in the deep ocean, under harsh conditions of light and pressure. There is no evidence yet of any kind of life prospering beyond our planet, but the study of extreme ecosystems on Earth helps us to predict the conditions needed for microbial life elsewhere in the Universe, and to design strategies and devices that will help us to find it. For example, we must know which instruments to send on space missions to detect gases produced by microorganisms, and we must know how to identify microbial mats in photographs.

HOW ARE MICROBIAL MATS STUDIED?
Microbial mats are everywhere on Earth, in both mild and extreme environments, and in both accessible and hard-to-reach places. Some of the most famous microbial mats are found at Yellowstone National Park, California (USA), where they grow near hot springs and geysers. However, you can find mats on some shallow coasts, where seawater rises and falls with the tides. For example, mats can grow in mangrove forests, salt marshes, wetlands, or at the edges of rivers and lakes. Sometimes, in other places where the water is not cleaned regularly, bits of biofilm or small mats can grow-for example, in birdbaths, fountains, or fish tanks (Figures A-H).
Current microbial mat research is conducted through field trips and expeditions that investigate the ability of mats and microorganisms to survive in various ecosystems, under diverse environmental conditions. This information helps scientists to understand the role of mats in ecosystems, and the limits of sunlight, water, temperature, and other conditions under which these microorganisms can function.
In addition to studying mats in their natural locations, pieces of mats are transported to laboratories, where long-term experiments can be performed, and various laboratory tools can be used to learn about the lives of the microorganisms. For example, we can grow mats in the laboratory and use instruments to measure how much kids.frontiersin.org March | Volume | Article |

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, microbial mats are complex systems that provide an excellent opportunity to study microbial diversity, ecology, and evolution. Mats are found all over Earth in many kinds of ecosystems, and they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Just like the mats themselves, scientist interested in studying microbial mats can be found all around the world. Do you know, or have visited any place where mats would grow?
. Explorer of enceladus and titan (E T): investigating ocean worlds' evolution and habitability in the solar system. Planet. Space Sci.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST:
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
COPYRIGHT © Cadena, Maza-Márquez, Ramírez Jiménez, Grim, García-Maldonado, Prufert-Bebout and Bebout. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

AUTHORS
SANTIAGO CADENA I am a marine biologist dedicated to the study of marine and hypersaline microorganisms. I am very interested in geomicrobiology, astrobiology, and biotechnology. I have experience in the study of the methane and sulfur cycles in microbial mats. Also, we are studying the microorganisms living in mangrove forests. In brief, I am interested in studying the role of microorganisms in nature and their potential use for biotechnological purposes.
PAULA MAZA-MÁRQUEZ I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Exobiology Branch at NASA's Ames Research Center. I study the structure and function of microbial mats. I am particularly interested in genes that control nitrogen cycling, to explore the hypothesis that key features of the modern biological nitrogen cycle evolved in microbial mat systems.
SANDRA I. RAMÍREZ JIMÉNEZ I am an astrobiologist at Centro de Investigaciones Químicas, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, interested in microorganisms from extreme ecosystems, specifically, bacteria living in high salt concentrations. I study the adaptation strategies bacteria use in environments mimicking the salty water of the satellite Europa or the subsurface of the planet Mars, to understand the limits of terrestrial life and the potential for life on other bodies in the solar system. BRAD M. BEBOUT I am a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center now, but I have been studying microbial mats since I was a graduate student; that was years ago! I am mostly interested in how mats help recycle carbon and nitrogen in the environments where we find them, but also in the biosignatures that they produce so that we, at NASA, can see if they occur in places other than Earth.