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Microbes that 'breathe iron' are found in Antarctic

Unique organisms have developed from more than a million years in isolation

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Taylor Glacier of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, where the life form, isolated for 1.5 million years, was found

ALAMY

Taylor Glacier of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, where the life form, isolated for 1.5 million years, was found

A community of microbes that have lived cut off from the rest of the world for more than 1.5 million years has been discovered beneath a vast glacier in the Antarctic.

The organisms have survived in total darkness on nothing but the minerals and long-decayed organic matter that were also trapped at the base of the glacier. Instead of breathing oxygen, they have learnt to "breathe" iron to produce energy.

The discovery of the microbes demonstrates the tenacious capacity of life to survive in the most extreme environments, and raises the prospect that it may one day be possible to find life in equally extreme environments both on Earth and on other planets.

"It's a bit like finding a forest that nobody has seen for 1.5 million years," said Professor Ann Pearson of Harvard University, one of the scientists who made the discovery. "Intriguingly, the species living there are similar to contemporary organisms, and yet quite different – a result, no doubt, of having lived in such an inhospitable environment for so long."

The scientists discovered the microbes by analysing the very salty water flowing out of a crack in the wall of the Taylor Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of East Antarctica. The glacier is famous for its "Blood Falls", an outflow of rusty-red mineral deposits first discovered in 1911.

The brine seeping from the glacier contained no oxygen, indicating that it had been isolated from the atmosphere, but it did include the telltale genetic signatures of living organisms living beneath the mass of ice.

The scientists believe that the microbes are descended from a population of marine organisms that once lived in an ancient ocean that had become a landlocked briny pond before being covered in the glacier between 1.5m and 2m years ago. The exact size of the pond is not known but it lies more than 1,300 feet below ice, about 2.5 miles from Blood Falls.

"This briny pond is a unique sort of time capsule from a period in Earth's history," said Jill Mikucki of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, the lead author of the study, published today in the journal Science.

The scientists obtained a cold, clear sample of the brine as it flowed from a crack in the glacier. "When I started running the chemical analysis on it, there was no oxygen. That was when this got really interesting. It was a real Eureka moment," Dr Mikucki said.

"The brine is about four times more salty than seawater and so it does not freeze, despite being at a temperature of about -10C. The chemical analysis showed that the genes of the microbes found in the brine were closely related to the genes of modern-day marine microbes even though they have been cut off from the ocean for more than a million years. The salts associated with these features are marine salts, and given the history of marine water in the dry valleys, it made sense that subglacial microbial communities might retain some of their marine heritage," Dr Mikucki said.

Scientists at the site are using the same sort of analytical techniques to search for extreme terrestrial life forms that they hope to use in the search for life on Mars and Europa, the frozen moon of Jupiter.

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Comments

[info]rozr wrote:
Saturday, 18 April 2009 at 10:13 am (UTC)
Absolutely fascinating.
We can take as much scientific knowledge as you all have.
[info]blastarrbxiii wrote:
Sunday, 19 April 2009 at 09:43 pm (UTC)
Yes, it's very interesting.

Sadly unless we want to pay for a subscription or pay per view to the online Science Magazine (mentioned in this article) that Professor Ann Pearson and her eight other co-finders have published to, we will never really know the full details of this discovery.

This type of discovery and ones similar to it, is possibly the closest we have come to finding alien life whilst it still being Earth based.

Such an interesting and important find, and the General Public of one country or another,
who no doubt funded the whole trip, the find, ongoing reserch and all the multi million dollar/pound land based facilities are very much excluded from the results.
[the UK had someone from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge credited in the report].

Other than a few tit bits given to the various newspapers and an extract of five or six lines of the report online, that's all we get for our money.
Playing it all a bit too close to the chest again.
[One day you 'scientists' might realise, the Public will take as much scientific knowledge as you all can muster.]

Just as there may well be many diverse forms of life in the undercurrents of the 150 or so lakes under the Antartic ice caps
there is also an undercurrent of secrecy between the Science community and the General Public.
Their loyalty being to their community and science.

There is no doubt in this.

THANKS for letting us fund you all, give us a nice good kicking in the teeth again sometime.
Re: We can take as much scientific knowledge as you all have.
[info]mountainhop wrote:
Monday, 20 April 2009 at 10:31 am (UTC)
You think scientists themselves don't have to pay for access to the same Journals?? Stop being so dense. You want to read in more detail, buy a subscription.
Re: We can take as much scientific knowledge as you all have.
[info]snappy99 wrote:
Monday, 20 April 2009 at 02:13 pm (UTC)
scientific journals cost money to produce. that money has to come from somewhere and a subscription fee is one solution.
But it's still a fair point as many journals are very expensive and they usually charge the authors too if the paper to be published is too long.
There is of course nothing to stop the authors putting their results on to their university or personal webspaces!
Re: We can take as much scientific knowledge as you all have.
[info]rexxxxxxxx wrote:
Sunday, 15 November 2009 at 10:24 pm (UTC)

get a paper round and nick other peoples' science mags like the rest of us curious teenagers



,
The Life of Brine..revisited
[info]kodak321 wrote:
Monday, 20 April 2009 at 09:52 pm (UTC)
Any criticism of the research undertaken? I understand the microbes are bacteria. Any expert out there?
Iron utilizing bacteria
[info]rocks39 wrote:
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 at 12:40 pm (UTC)
For more information on this, Try<http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaplayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=103210921&m=103210903>
Re: Iron utilizing bacteria
[info]rocks39 wrote:
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 at 01:02 pm (UTC)
Iron 'breathing' bacteria
[info]sci_o wrote:
Thursday, 30 April 2009 at 09:36 am (UTC)
Given the close genetic relationship, on what grounds do the scientists say the bacteria are 1 million years old? Also given the very different metabolism suggested, how come the genetic linkage is so close? Are the scientists suggesting these organisms have new genetic information that was not present in the generation that got trapped in the first place. Not exactly provable since we cannot go back in time to analyse the ancestors genes. Is this another evolution myth?
[info]plyometrics wrote:
Sunday, 2 August 2009 at 02:25 pm (UTC)
It's crazy to think of the physiology of those microbes and how they can somehow use iron instead of oxygen.

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