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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?
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.
Every living thing that we have discovered on thsi planet so far has DNA. Everything. "Modern" (Eukaryotic) multi-celled and many single eleed organisms keep their DNA in the cell nuclei. Most bacteria (but not all) are of the "non-modern" (Prokaryotic) type. Their DNA just floats around in their cells. However they ALL have DNA.
Even viruses, which are debatable as to their status as organisms keep DNA around (though a few are RNA based and known as retro viruses. HIV is an example)
A house in Britain that was moved / removed. Underneath the stone and misc. flooring (which was all removed) a bunch of flowers sprouted that were totally unlike any in the area, but which matched descriptions from the middle ages of flowers at the time. But these flowers are long gone from Britain now.
This I haven't heard about. It seems unlikely to me, though. We have a reasonable idea as to what the flora of Britain was like during the Middle Ages, and where those species are now (mostly still there).
I wouldn't be surprised if there were windborne seeds and pollen in the Antarctic ice, but I'm not sure if much effort has gone into looking. It's not too likely that seeds would germinate (seeds are tough, but there are limits), but it might be possible to extract DNA. At the moment, we could compare that DNA to extant plants, but not do a whole lot else... the days of recreating "Jurassic Park" type plants is still waaay off.
I prefer to be called Evil Scientist.
Every living organism on earth, plants and bacteria included, maintain their genome primarily in DNA, and use RNA during the process of converting the DNA source code into protein executables (see what a CS/Bio double major does for you?). To note an exception, there are many viruses that carry their entire genome in RNA, but there is some debate as to whether or not viruses are even alive, as they're little more than *NA wrapped in a protein shell.
When you freeze mammalian cells, you do not have to use DMSO, 100% FBS will do. Besides, mammalian cells have not adopted to being frozen. Bacteria often do, especially soil ones. In addition, some organisms sporulate and spores are very resistant to harsh treatment. It is not surprising to me that bacteria sutvived that long, although it is definetely unusual.