Skip to content

Unexplainable.net

Watching The World Change

  • Commonly Mistaken UFO Sighting Culprits I UFOs and Aliens
  • Spirituality and science conflict Meditation And Spirituality
  • Logical correlation of the physical & spiritual universes Recent Submissions
  • Uranus Space and Astrology
  • Cool Technology Gadgets: For Music Technology Articles
  • Say Goodbye to the Paranormal and Unexplainable Stories of 2007 Information and Theories
  • Supernatural Humans Simply Unexplainable
  • Earth on Path to Solar Danger Zone Space and Astrology

Bacteria Thrives 1000’s of Years In Freezing Temps

Posted on February 26, 2005 By jim No Comments on Bacteria Thrives 1000’s of Years In Freezing Temps
Mooker

NASA Finds Life at ‘Extremes’

Hundreds of feet under the Alaska tundra, NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover ignores the eerie silence of the icy tunnel around him, even ignores the bones of woolly mammoths and steppe bison jutting here and there from the jagged walls, frozen where they died tens of thousands of years ago”¦ about the time Homo sapiens began to assert dominance over the prehistoric planet.

Forget the fossils. Instead, Hoover is poring over pale blue and white patches covering an ice wedge in the tunnel wall. It’s a microbial community of bacteria and fungi, growing in total darkness, thriving at temperatures that have hovered below freezing for thousands of years.

Image at right: NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover takes ice samples from the permafrost deep inside the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory near Fox, Alaska. The samples, dating back some 32,000 years, contained living organisms–a previously unrecorded “extremophile” bacterial species identified by Hoover and his colleagues. Image credit: NASA/R. Hoover

For Hoover and his colleagues, proof of life is the real find, especially in a subterranean tomb, sleeping under ice from the Pleistocene Age. In this unlikely place, they discovered a new life form, a never-before-seen bacterial species they have dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium. It’s roughly 32,000 years old.

And it’s still alive.

The bacterium–the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice–is NASA’s latest discovery of an “extremophile.” Extremophiles are hardy life forms that exist and flourish in conditions hostile to most known organisms, from the potentially toxic chemical levels of salt-choked lakes and alkaline deserts to the extreme heat of deep-sea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.

NASA and its partner organizations study the potential for life in such extreme zones to help understand the limitations of life on Earth and to prepare robotic probes and, eventually, human explorers to search other worlds for signs of life.

That search is a key element of the Vision for Space Exploration, the ambitious effort to return Americans to the Moon and to conduct robotic and human exploration of Mars and other worlds in our Solar System, which might conceal life forms unimaginable to us–thriving in conditions few Earth species could tolerate.

In 1999 and 2000, Hoover, a researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., time-traveled back to the Pleistocene via the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or “CRREL tunnel.” The research site near Fox, Alaska, just north of Fairbanks, was carved by the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1960s to enable geologists and other scientists to study permafrost–the mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock–and to develop drilling techniques in preparation for construction in the early 1970s of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.

Image at right: Seen under a microscope, a new bacterium identified by NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover and his colleagues thrives–despite having been thawed from ice dating back some 32,000 years, to the Pleistocene era. Living bacteria are stained green. Image credit: University of Alabama at Birmingham, A. Bej

Hoover initially went to the CRREL tunnel in search of “psychrophiles”–organisms that live only at extremely low temperatures. Hoover initially suspected the tiny, frozen samples he collected there, from ice more than 30 millennia old, were diatoms, or microscopic, golden-brown algae. But closer study at the nearby University of Alaska revealed not diatoms but something much more interesting–an assortment of bacterial cells, many of which came to life as soon as the ice thawed.

Back home at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville–the scientific research consortium operated by NASA and Alabama universities–Hoover and his collaborator, microbiologist Dr. Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, discovered the ice samples contained anaerobic bacteria that grew on sugars and proteins in total absence of oxygen. They had frozen near the end of the Pleistocene Age, which extended from about 1.8 million years ago to just 11,000 years ago–and earned the new bacterium its name.

“It is thrilling to see real, living organisms that existed in an ancient ecosystem,” Pikuta said. “It’s just bacteria–but bacteria from a period when mammoths roamed the Earth.”

Further testing revealed the organism was not a psychrophile at all, but a “psychrotolerant”–not an organism that thrives only at very cold temperatures, but one capable of enduring deep cold that resumes normal activity when temperatures rise.

Hoover, Pikuta and their colleagues–Damien Marsic of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Professor Asim Bej of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Dr. Jane Tang and Dr. Paul Krader of the American Type Culture Collection in Manassas, Va.–spent four years determining whether the find in Alaska was indeed a legitimate new species. Pikuta isolated and cultured the CRREL tunnel strain, recording the bacterial growth rate, high- and low-temperature tolerances, pH and salinity range, antibiotic sensitivity and other required characteristics, and comparing the results with known species most closely related to this new strain. Marsic next conducted gene sequencing studies, determining how the bacterium fit into the phylogenetic tree–the evolutionary history of a species or group of organisms.

The result: proof of a new life form. Their findings were published in the January issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The bimonthly periodical, the official journal of record for new bacterial species, is produced by the Society for General Microbiology.

“Astrobiologists ask, ‘Is life strictly terrestrial in origin, or is it a cosmic imperative, an undeniable, universal biological truth?’ That possibility is central to our desire to explore the universe,” Hoover said.

“The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests–but does not promise–that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa,” he added.

Although many people think of bacteria merely as a cause of illness or decay, Hoover and Pikuta are quick to defend the organisms, which they call highly advanced marvels of natural engineering. “Without bacteria, the existence of multicellular organisms is, in principle, impossible,” Pikuta said.

There are approximately 7,000 validly described species of bacteria, though far more are surmised to exist in nature. The vast majority of bacteria are harmless to humans. Only a very few–less than 1 percent of all known species–are dangerous. And many, Hoover noted, are valuable to human life, aiding us in numerous ways: culturing wine, dairy products and other foods; assisting in the biological extraction of gold and other precious metals from ore wastes; and aiding in the production of valuable proteins and life-saving drugs.

Carnobacterium pleistocenium could even offer new breakthroughs in medicine, Hoover said. “The enzymes and proteins it possesses, which give it the ability to spring to life after such long periods of dormancy, might hold the key to long-term cryogenic–or very low temperature–storage of living cells, tissues and perhaps even complex life forms,” he said.

Living cultures of the new bacterium have been deposited in the American Type Culture Collection, in the Microbial Collection at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms in Saitama, Japan.

Hoover and his team previously discovered Spirochaeta Americana, a new bacterium thriving in the salty, oxygen-free, alkaline mud of Mono Lake, a volcanic basin in California.

And they’re not done hunting evidence of life in Earth’s most inhospitable reaches, he says.

“Life is far more diverse, and far more resistant to conditions we consider hostile, than was thought possible only a decade or two ago,” Hoover said. “Studying these organisms helps us understand that life may be far more widespread in the cosmos than we previously imagined.”

Information and Theories

Post navigation

Previous Post: Satellites CALIPSO and CloudSat Dance around Earth
Next Post: Cassini Reveals More Truths About Saturn

Related Posts

  • Cracking Knuckles, Swallowing Gum & More Information and Theories
  • The Grail and the Alpha Omega – Pt I Information and Theories
  • Quantum Teleportation Not For Use on Humans Information and Theories
  • Pi Information and Theories
  • Armstrongs Famous Mankind Statement Contradicts Itself Information and Theories
  • Facts About Hephaestus, God of Fire Information and Theories

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Mahavatar Babaji: The Yogi alive for 2000 years
  • Spirituality and science conflict
  • Conspiracies and myths about spirituality
  • Know your Ki: Reiki
  • 10 amazing plants to promote spirituality and positivity

Recent Comments

No comments to show.

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2018
  • February 2018
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • February 2016
  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • July 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • December 2004
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • June 2004
  • May 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • December 2003
  • November 2003
  • October 2003

Categories

  • Ancient Civilizations
  • Benjamin Fulford Story
  • Cryptology and Monsters
  • Eating Healthy
  • Ghost And Demons
  • Information and Theories
  • Mars Coverage
  • Meditation And Spirituality
  • Mysteries
  • NASA Articles
  • Other Exciting News
  • Personal Accounts
  • Pictures And Multimedia
  • Political Conspiracies
  • Recent Submissions
  • Religion Articles
  • Self Improvement
  • Simply Unexplainable
  • Space and Astrology
  • Technology Articles
  • True Stories
  • UFOs and Aliens
  • Unexplainable Video Library
  • Unexplainable Weather
  • Interesting Phobias ”“ Death-Related Fears Information and Theories
  • Dinosaurs of the Triassic Period Information and Theories
  • Notable Archeologists: Rhy Jones & Peter Glob Ancient Civilizations
  • EXAMINER: UFO Cosmic contact on a beach in Vancouver UFOs and Aliens
  • Iraqi War Will Not Change Earth Climate Unexplainable Weather
  • Science Fiction Alien Movie Facts and Trivia: “Species” (1995) II Information and Theories
  • Interesting Headlines , August 2009 Other Exciting News
  • Using Vegetables to Heal: Cabbage & Yams Information and Theories

Copyright © 2023 Unexplainable.net.

Powered by PressBook News Dark theme