Slashdot Mirror
Ancient Antarctic Bacteria Revived
Danny Rathjens writes "Frozen bacteria from Antarctica, estimated to be between five to eight million years old, were brought back to life simply by warming them up! NASA folks also participated since they think this can give them better clues on where to look for life on Mars."
Umm - how can a BACTERIA be a VIRUS since these are completely different organisms?
"The Andromeda Strain", by Michael Crichton, (c) 1969
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
At least a couple of extras got turned into poorly made-up plant things and died horrible deaths. There were some goofy special effects and pithy lines from the Doctor. NASA better hope that's all that happens this time too.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I guess the headline: Bacteria warmed up! had a lot less punch than "brought back to life."
I have whole freezers full of mammalian, bacteria, and yeast cells that I can though out and revive with a usual 80% efficiency. Freezing cells for later use is VERY common in the research world. For longterm storage -160 is preferred and for short term -80 is acceptable. The fact that these survived bacteria so long at -27 is suprising. It makes me wonder what percentage actually survived.
What is a bit more suprising about this is that the cells were not stored in any special solution. DMSO or glycerol based solutions are typically added to the cell media right before freezing because they prevent ice crystals from burtsting the cells. You ever fill a sealed glass container with water and then freeze it? The water will expand and crack the glass. Same principle here.
These bacteria cells are hardy little suckers.
...these scientists haven't watched enough horror movies.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
I love the comments so far that are foretelling doom. Perhaps these microbes will lead us in the direction of a cure for cancer or be ultra efficient energy producers that can live in batteries. Those seem just a likely to me.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
No, I did not RTFA, but I hope these guys know what the hell they're doing, i.e. I hope to hell [er- heaven] that they're doing this in one of those negative pressure Category III facilities, and that they're all wearing those Intel bunny spacesuits.
While I'll agree that it's a low probability event, if they were to revive some bacteria for which modern organisms lacked an immune response, there could be some serious hell to pay.
I have the same feeling about this idiotic mission to return a mist sample from a [water-based] comet, or to return a soil sample from Mars - while it's a low probability event, the expected consequences from releasing some sort of organic agent into our ecosystem for which we have no immune protection are simply catastrophic.
You may laugh, but hospitals are having a helluva time trying to protect patients from methicillin and vancomycin resistant staphylococcus aureus, and, fifteen years ago, we didn't even know that pseudo-living, pseudo-non-living things like prions even existed.
PS: This little screed is brought to you by a card-carrying, gun-toting, eco-sceptic pillar of what many /.ers would call the right-wing fringe, but folks, we need to be very, very careful with this stuff.
Hey, don't blame the bacteria - it was born that way! If it was born as a virus in a bacteria's body, you have NO RIGHT to superimpose your 'value system' on it. Get your laws of the bacteria's body!
Damn right-wingers...
Yeah, a chance at new batteries vs. possible plague. Sounds like a reasonable risk to me. At least as long as someone else does the dying.
BC
Around 1995 scientists extracted bacteria from an insect's stomach, that had been trapped in amber for 125 million years, and they lived.
A few years later, scientists revived bacteria that had been dormant inside a crystal of common table salt for 250 million years!
Even so, Mars has been geologically dead for 1.5 billion years, so I don't know how how these paltry 8 million years are suddenly so significant.
What I'm wondering is, I wonder if any seeds (or at least pollen) can be found preserved by extreme cold in the Antartic that could grow to be real plants ? If so, it seems to me a study of the amino acids, etc. in the plants might be worthwhile of study.
Does anyone know if plants have DNA? I am thinking that only animals have DNA, that plants have different structures like RNA or something. Sorry for my ignorance, I'm willing to read this online if someone can point me in the right direction to a site on the basics of plant biology without being too 'biochemical genetic engineering' (expert level) text. I've had HS bio, and college chem, and lots and lots and lots of physics, but that's it...
Thanks,
-- Kevin J. Rice
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Regardless, hopefully if we were to revive some sort of aincient virus it wont be able to infect us. SInce it would likely have evolved long before humans, it might not know what to do with us.
A bacterium on the other hand very well might cause issues. Since bacteria dont normally try and make you sick. They just try and live their lives and sometimes happen to release toxins into you. SO aincient bacteria could very well cause us troubles (but its not really their fault).
...We're not sure how long Al Gore can go yet and still be revived.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Prions. I don't know that much about them. Would we say they are "living things"?
There have been scattered reports of glowing green swarms attacking people at night in the woods
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - George Orwell
I think I saw the documentary on this... Clicky
Er... the virus isn't TRYING to make you sick either. It's not "trying" to do anything. All it does is replicate itself. The fact that you get sick is a byproduct of that (a combination of the facts that the virus is using up your cells' resources, the virus is killing some cells, and your immune system is also killing cells as it fights the infection).
Theoretically, all an ancient virus needs to do to infect you is have some way of getting into your cells and a mechanism by which to copy itself (or co-opt your cells' into copying it).
Now, in addition to all the other dangers of scientific research, you want to add the possibility of torture? You inhuman bastard! Oh well, at least you're not asking them to read any of Crichton's dreck. Movies are a medium where Crichton's levels of ignorance, stupidity and scientific illiteracy are the norm, which helps numb the pain somewhat.... :)
Five to eight million years old? Oh Please! Any good christian will tell you that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
H.P. Lovecraft foresaw this type of discovery in his novella _At the Mountains of Madness_. Could this be evidence of the old ones??!
You elitist, intellectual bastard! You are certainly off my team-time list.
So you mean civilization will nearly be brought to the brink of extinction by an unknown plague only to have it mysteriously mutate completely and in unison to a rubber-eating form just in time for the total cop-out ending?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Well I, for one, welcome our new ancient bacterial overlords!
BRING IT ON! ! ! ! !
I recall reading something about this. The lotus seed was found in a dugout canoe in a peat bog. The estimate in the article I read, was the seed would have been ~1,200 years old.
While treating poison oak I found the compound which causes the allergic reaction has been noted to survive over 100 years in a bell jar (giving a rash to someone to handled the leaves or twigs.)
I wouldn't hastily discount the 'British House' anecdote, as plants do tend to come and go. For several years there was a thick patch of goldenrod in a field, then it ceased, perhaps due to concentration of fungi or animals/insects which fed upon the plant. Generally the plants have spread their seeds further away, hence the species continues, but simply moves around in much the same manner a herd of animals does.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar