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3000-year-old Microbes

Posted by michael on from the stuff-you-found-at-the-back-of-your-refrigerator dept.

marga writes "Science Daily is running a story about a group of researchers the have been drilling into the Antarctic ice and discovered 3000-year-old microbes that could come back to life if put in contact with liquid water. And not only that, they claim that they have uncovered a whole new ecological system lying beneath the Lake Vida."

34 comments

  1. Worried by dar · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know I worry too much, but this makes me think of the Andromeda Strain.

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    1. Re:Worried by Dannon · · Score: 4, Funny
      Nah, this is more like Gremlins. Three rules:

      1. Don't get them wet,
      2. Don't expose them to sunlight, and
      3. Don't ever let them eat after midnight!
      --
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    2. Re:Worried by Consul · · Score: 2

      Don't ever let them eat after midnight!

      You know, I've often wondered how gremlins know what time zone they're in...

      --

      -----

      "You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."

    3. Re:Worried by Myco · · Score: 2

      Or whether they abide by daylight savings time.

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    4. Re:Worried by Simon+Field · · Score: 4, Insightful


      Some bacteria that have evolved to live in very salty water at -10 Celsius are unlikely to do much harm to a human.

      On the other hand, the anti-freeze molecules they make might be quite beneficial. Something like that might make cryogenic suspended animation possible, or just better ice cream.

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    5. Re:Worried by Anik315 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Epidemic viral agents/bacteria aren't going to come from some exotic place since they have to be tailor made for our immune system.

      Our immune system has been evolving for hundreds of millions years, and it will attack everything that doesn't have the right 'password'. The only way pathogens can get those 'passwords' is just through enormous amounts of random mutation.

      The rather prosiac solution is to stop using antibiotics irresponsibly because that just allows the stronger strains to proliferate.

    6. Re:Worried by Sanga · · Score: 1

      Children's ice cream, Mandrake.

      (insert redundant mention of the Andromeda strain)

    7. Re:Worried by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 2

      More likely they'll come from the CDC..

  2. "contaminate" by 216pi · · Score: 1, Redundant

    does anybody else wory about that this 3000 year old stable ecological system could now have been "contaminated" by alien DNA? Or that it at least had to be polluted? What do you need to keep a drill head moving/to not make it freeze in the ice? petrol? Alcohol?

    Was it that smart to brake the ice?

    1. Re:"contaminate" by Christopher+Doopov · · Score: 3, Interesting

      does anybody else wory about that this 3000 year old stable ecological system could now have been "contaminated" by alien DNA?

      I certainly worry more about our own, Earth DNA. There is still no evidence of extraterrestrial life existence, which may just mean that no alien life form has reached our planet yet. That is why I do not worry about it. But I do worry about our domestic life forms, which -- unlike alien life forms -- are known to be sometimes lethal to other life forms of Earth.

      Or that it at least had to be polluted?

      What do you mean by "polluted"?

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      ~Christopher Doopov

    2. Re:"contaminate" by Eagle7 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think he meant alien in the traditional sense, i.e. "from outside the enclosed ecosystem", not "extraterrestrial." In other words, did the scientists unwittingly just go and open up a lake that's been sealed for 3000 years and contaminate it before it could even be studied? Did thier drills leak anything into said lake, affecting it's chemistry? etc.

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    3. Re:"contaminate" by jnana · · Score: 4, Informative

      They didn't actually drill far enough down to enter the water. They went to within three meters of the bottom of the ice. They found what they did in this ice, and are preparing to go back and actually drill through the ice, when they have equipment that can prevent contamination. The Nature article is much better than this Science Daily.

  3. Europa by danratherfan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It makes the prospects for life on Europa just that much more promising. We're finding life can exist in such extreme conditions. It's time we sent a probe to drill beneath the ice there.

    1. Re:Europa by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Funny

      It makes the prospects for life on Europa just that much more promising.

      Seems like a long way to go for food! ;-)

      I have to second whoever cited the Andromeda Strain. How do we know the critters weren't buried there years ago on purpose by hostile aliens, a time bomb set to go off when we got too curious....

      I know we've seen this scifi plot 100 times. But how do we know these tired plots weren't buried there years ago on purpose by hostile aliens, a time bomb......

    2. Re:Europa by Sanga · · Score: 1

      Wonder if their sys admin went bad ....

      http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/18/1115 25 3&mode=nested&tid=99

  4. Ancient Microbes In The Wild by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 0, Redundant
    If some of these revived microbes were to escape into the wild could that pose a threat? I mean much like the epidemics of introducing insects to other continents and nearly wiping out other species, could these microbes attack helpful ones?

    What if they cause disease?

    I guess that this isn't as much of an issue as say, 100,000 year old microbes, but still...

    Time to fetch the bio suit and build a shelter to preserve life as we know it. =)

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    ...spike
    Ewwwwww, coconut...
  5. In other news... by derinax · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~vampire/thing/thin g.htm

    and

    http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=368

  6. Age is not an issue by Christopher+Doopov · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I guess that this isn't as much of an issue as say, 100,000 year old microbes, but still...

    I don't know if this was meant to be a joke (please excuse my lack of sense of humor then) but the age of those organisms is meaningless. I do not care if any given life form is one year old or million years old, as long as it is safe for humans. Remember that there are species, which have not been evolving for many years. There is no difference between such an organism today, and the same organism years ago, because it has not changed. The age is not an issue, the behavior is.

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    ~Christopher Doopov

    1. Re:Age is not an issue by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 1
      Well, it was meant to be funny; just reminded me of a sci-fi movie plot or that episode of xfiles with those worms.

      But also, you never know... you just never know...

      --



      ...spike
      Ewwwwww, coconut...
    2. Re:Age is not an issue by bcrowell · · Score: 2
      I can't quite make out what you're trying to say here. But here's my take on it. I'm 36 years old, but very few of my cells are that old. Except for brain cells, all the cells in your body renew themselves pretty frequently. The reason it makes sense to say I'm 36 years old, as opposed to, say one year old (which might be how old most of my cells are) is that 36 years ago was the date when my parents mixed their DNA together.

      It's unclear to me how to say how old a unicellular organism is, especially if it's purely asexual. A microbe alive today may have undergone fission a month ago, but does that mean it's only one month old? If so, then by that logic, I'm one year old.

      Do we date its age That would be consistent with the rule we use for saying that I'm 36, but in that case microbes should be considered as effectively immortal.

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  7. Tune Back to the Late Late Show, kiddies by 0x69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's see... How many umpteen-thousand-year-old woolly mammoths have been dug out of Siberian ice? How many slow-moving glaciers are drooling ancient bits of organic crud all the time? How many deep old aquifers have been drilled & pumped by water-hungry people?

    How many times have ancient supergerms from these Not-Meant-To-Be-Touched-By-Man sources nearly wiped humanity from the face of the Earth?

    There's really no need to fear for the future, folks. Our handsome hero, his beautiful babe, and their nerdy sidekick will save the world before bedtime.

    We'll return to tonight's feature - "Purple Doom From The Ice Continent" - after a quick message from our sponsors...

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    1. Re:Tune Back to the Late Late Show, kiddies by ArsonPerBuilding · · Score: 2, Funny

      How many times have ancient supergerms from these Not-Meant-To-Be-Touched-By-Man sources nearly wiped humanity from the face of the Earth?
      There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out life on this miserable planet. The only way these people get on with their happy lives is they do not KNOW ABOUT IT.

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    2. Re:Tune Back to the Late Late Show, kiddies by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 2

      "How many deep old aquifers have been drilled & pumped by water-hungry people?"

      We usually use the term Thirsty for those types of people.

  8. Xenocide by Gkeeper80 · · Score: 1

    Wait untill you find out that they're the ones who killed the dinosaurs, but then wrote a lovely book about them. Now they're trying to restore the last dinosaur eggs...here we go again

  9. It's all fun and games... by Hubert_Shrump · · Score: 2

    Till some dogs get hollowed out; Wilford Brimley stops eating oatmeal and starts kickin ass and taking names; and the only guy we can count on has a gigantic foam cowboy hat.

    "I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off whatever it is."

    --
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  10. Bah! That's nothing. by Royster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There were some yeast spores dating back 25-40 million years which were claimed to have been revived. Google's cached copy of the Time Magazine article from 1995

    They used it to brew beer!

    Now there's Procress Through Science!

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    1. Re:Bah! That's nothing. by Angry+Toad · · Score: 2

      There was a whole spate of "ancient organism revival" claims around the mid-1990's. I'm too lazy to go and look up the refs right now, but some of them even made the pages of Science and Nature, and they all made the mass media fer sure. What never makes the mass media is the followup a couple of months later where somebody clearly demonstrates that said organisms originated from contamination in the laboratory that claims to have "revived" the organisms. This happened on a regular basis and eventually it was recognized that there's a likely limit of some hundred thousand or so years on even being able to isolate tiny fragments of degraded DNA, let alone being able to "revive" ancient organisms.

      Three thousand years is a drop in the bucket, however. No reason you couldn't revive dormant bacteria that old.

    2. Re:Bah! That's nothing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, how did the beer taste? Or, does it needs more yeast?

  11. Livin in Lake Vida (have to do it) by Sanga · · Score: 1

    Ricky Martin dedicated his old song to this survivor!!

    Livin la Vida lova

  12. what is reviving those microbes is a BAAAAADDD ide by wessman · · Score: 1

    Anybody else here worried about what those crazy scientists might be reviving. I'm thinking X-Files becomes reality. You never know how "contained" some of these transporting methods and research labs truly are.

  13. Re:what is reviving those microbes is a BAAAAADDD by judowillreturns · · Score: 1

    Because, of course, a single-celled organism is just going to bust out of a truck and go around eating things. If they were so dangerous, they would have broken outta the ice long ago and eaten people. There is a difference between nerds and geeks. Nerds are useful, geeks watch too much Sci-Fi.