Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years in Ice

[Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years in Ice] - Fox News - June 15, 2009

After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

"We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there's not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn't be reproducing much.

It's possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating.

"Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don't yet fully understand," Brenchley told LiveScience.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well.

"We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Such vigor is partially due to the microbe's small size, the scientists speculate ... cont. at link above.

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Another interesting thing to ponder; what if we melt the polar ice caps and release some long hidden killer into the environment?

Perhaps what killed off some of our ancestors is lurking in the ice someplace.

"Another interesting thing to ponder; what if we melt the polar ice caps and release some long hidden killer into the environment?"

I find it a little ironic you say this whilst posting a link to a Fox News site! They still seem to insist that AGW is all lies!!!

Anyone that follows my stuff on here, knows that "irony" is my middle name.

Isn't irony like coppery or leady, but harder?!

Makes us wonder if an anaerobe type can survive in a replete bath/casing of CO2/H20 ice in an environment where the gases are transient or stable and present in swinging pressures by seasons. Iron'y there is a nutrient available as here on Earth,
On Mars the dark streaking of the ice cap scarps are related to the similar dark streaking of the dunes, seasonal ices, and similar appearing geology actions, but are discussed as separate items for convenience during accumulation of the evidence.
Will we see organic materials involved, or only inorganic materials after the study of these?
Your topic challenges the routine of "no atmosphere, no water, no nutrients," claims of conservative planners who are waiting for a simple set of facts to please themselves with a finished proof in a finding of Earth type life on Mars.
We are looking at a planet with a separate history apparently, and the topic subject brings the possible extensions of niches for a novel life type, closer to the conditions of Mars.
Could life extend the topic findings even further, toward Mars conditions?
Again, I'd like to mention that I have watched healthy thriving mosquito larvae living in absolutely deadly toxic waters, that nothing would be imagined to live in. I simply cou
ldn't kill the larvae, but drying them would have worked. If they were able to be frozen routinely, they would possibly survive on Mars in places. Add the topic findings applied to mosquito larvae and a complex healthy life-form for Mars is close to completion(in our imagination). Quite an Iron'y right here on Earth.

Microbe that might survive on Mars:

http://www.astrobio.net/index.php?option=com_exclusive&task=detail&id=3184

Bars,

Interesting read and organism. A methane producer is a good guess.

I could easily find myself writing science fiction about the possibilities. I have one idea in particular, that I haven't heard mentioned, but which I imagine, might exist.

When it comes to extreme conditions, there are few greater than having little or no atmosphere.

Interesting article (re 5). A University of Potsdam research fellow, researching extremophiles in hostile conditions of abandoned opencast pits acidic ponds of water also told me the "iron eating" anaerobic extremophiles living there could easily make a living under martian conditions as well.
Iam relay looking forward to advanced recon robots (MSL, ExoMars) to land at the right spots and with the right instrumentation to finaly detect the "holy grail" of science called alien life.

Fun Time.

[link]

so there are more monolith like objects around like i spotted and published here

the object from linked topic in Mars Cerberus Palus area at 100% zoom - i called it "Katharinenstein" :

thanks for the above link Barsoomer