Loki
12-19-2009, 03:20 PM
Microbes survive 30,000 years inside a salt crystal (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.700-microbes-survive-30000-years-inside-a-salt-crystal.html)
16 December 2009 by Bob Holmes
THRIFTY microbes entombed in a salt crystal have survived for 30,000 years by feeding off the remains of algae that were trapped along with them. This is the most convincing example to date of long-term survival.
Brian Schubert, a microbiologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and colleagues studied salt crystals in a sediment core taken from Death Valley in California. The crystals contained tiny pockets of liquid, and the team found that they could grow live colonies of archaeans from samples of it. The team dated the liquid at between 22,000 and 34,000 years old (Geology, vol 37, p 1059).
Colonies of archaeans were grown from liquid within salt crystals that was up to 34,000 years old
This is not the first time microbes have been cultured from pockets of liquid trapped inside salt; one team has reported doing so with liquid they dated as being 250 million years old (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17022885.000-the-immortals.html). Their results were questioned, however, as the salt crystals could have dissolved and recrystallised over time, trapping modern microbes.
In contrast, Schubert says that the structure of his crystals indicates that they formed in a hypersaline lake. As there hasn't been a permanent lake in Death Valley for at least 10,000 years, this suggests that recrystallisation hasn't taken place, supporting the idea that the crystals - and hence the microbes within them - are indeed as old as they appear, says Robert Hazen at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, who is sceptical of previous claims.
Moreover, Schubert thinks he can explain how his microbes managed to stay alive so long. Every crystal that contained live archaeans also contained dead cells from a salt-lake alga known as Dunaliella, which contain high concentrations of glycerol. The team suggest that the glycerol had seeped out of the cells, and that the archaeans lived off this.
Dunaliella cells are such good fodder that the microbes could live much longer than 30,000 years, says Schubert. He calculates that a single Dunaliella cell contains enough glycerol to meet an archaean's minimal needs for 12 million years. "We have inclusions with dozens of these algal cells inside and just a couple of archaeans, so they have basically a limitless supply," he says.
If so, microbes could plausibly survive within salt crystals for hundreds of millions of years, as previous studies have claimed. Although, as Schubert warns, "it's a very large leap to go from 30,000 years to 250 million years".
16 December 2009 by Bob Holmes
THRIFTY microbes entombed in a salt crystal have survived for 30,000 years by feeding off the remains of algae that were trapped along with them. This is the most convincing example to date of long-term survival.
Brian Schubert, a microbiologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and colleagues studied salt crystals in a sediment core taken from Death Valley in California. The crystals contained tiny pockets of liquid, and the team found that they could grow live colonies of archaeans from samples of it. The team dated the liquid at between 22,000 and 34,000 years old (Geology, vol 37, p 1059).
Colonies of archaeans were grown from liquid within salt crystals that was up to 34,000 years old
This is not the first time microbes have been cultured from pockets of liquid trapped inside salt; one team has reported doing so with liquid they dated as being 250 million years old (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17022885.000-the-immortals.html). Their results were questioned, however, as the salt crystals could have dissolved and recrystallised over time, trapping modern microbes.
In contrast, Schubert says that the structure of his crystals indicates that they formed in a hypersaline lake. As there hasn't been a permanent lake in Death Valley for at least 10,000 years, this suggests that recrystallisation hasn't taken place, supporting the idea that the crystals - and hence the microbes within them - are indeed as old as they appear, says Robert Hazen at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, who is sceptical of previous claims.
Moreover, Schubert thinks he can explain how his microbes managed to stay alive so long. Every crystal that contained live archaeans also contained dead cells from a salt-lake alga known as Dunaliella, which contain high concentrations of glycerol. The team suggest that the glycerol had seeped out of the cells, and that the archaeans lived off this.
Dunaliella cells are such good fodder that the microbes could live much longer than 30,000 years, says Schubert. He calculates that a single Dunaliella cell contains enough glycerol to meet an archaean's minimal needs for 12 million years. "We have inclusions with dozens of these algal cells inside and just a couple of archaeans, so they have basically a limitless supply," he says.
If so, microbes could plausibly survive within salt crystals for hundreds of millions of years, as previous studies have claimed. Although, as Schubert warns, "it's a very large leap to go from 30,000 years to 250 million years".