In environments like the deep subsurface, microorganisms with long doubling times can remain metabolically active for millions of years — we propose referring to this class of extremophile as aeonophiles.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank D. Giovannelli, D. E. Larowe, K. A. Kormas and J. Arft for helping develop the term aeonophile. Funding was provided by NSF grants EAR-2121670 and OCE-2151015 (to K.G.L.) and NSF-OCE 2145434 (to A.D.S.).
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Nature Microbiology thanks John Spear and Alfred Spormann for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Lloyd, K.G., Steen, A.D. Defining ultra-slow-growing extremophilic microorganisms as aeonophiles. Nat Microbiol 10, 1555–1557 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02048-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02048-x
