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Russians Find "New Bacteria" In Lake Vostok
tverbeek writes "Russian scientists believe they have found a new type of bacteria in the sub-glacial Lake Vostok. From the article: 'The samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing types, said Sergei Bulat of the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics.
"After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database," he said. "We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he added.'"
I think you meant to say, "In Soviet Russia, bacteria finds you!"
It's fine, they're not Norwegian
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If in two hundred years we still have the history channel then we have need for a zombie plague.
That's hyperbole, I'm afraid. It's a bacterium, just a very distant cousin. Great for studying evolution, irrelevant to Michael Chrichton. Based on the other bacteria recovered from the borehole sample, its hobbies most likely consist of "feeding on geothermal heat" and "being adapted to an extremely stable, homogeneous environment with no predators or other forms of life," which as a general rule means it's as helpless as the Kakapo.
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It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
I don't think it's published yet. TFA mentions "less than" 86% DNA "similarity", which I think was supposed to be 86% 16S RNA homology, in which case, the bacterium has been separated from the nearest known species for at least 700 million years.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I'm not exactly sure if this invalidates your comment, but Uranus is not believed to have a distinct surface underneath its atmosphere. The most popular model suggests that it just gets denser and denser, culminating in a rapidly-spinning mantle-ocean of water, ammonia, and other gasses long before the actual rocky core.
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Burma shave.
rewriting history since 2109
We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he added.'"
shittiest name ever!
Based on circumstantial evidence (another species found nearby), the bacterium is a thermophile that depends on geothermal heat for warmth. Because of the way thermophiles evolve, it is pretty much certain that the proteins in this species are non-functional at colder temperatures; the samples collected were either dead or in a deep state of antifreeze-clogged hibernation.
It's also 700 million years (or more!) behind on immune defences, which means it's vulnerable to everything from the toxins that all plants constantly secret all the time to the macrophages in our blood. The immune game is a Red Queen scenario—either a pathogen is at the forefront of innovation, or it's susceptible to the most basic form of detection.
The only environment this could possibly intrude upon is one comparable to its own—maybe a heat vent in another frozen lake. Even if it wasn't a thermophile, it would be dead meat on the surface because of bacteriophages (viruses). To add insult to injury, as far as we know this bacterium has no competitors and is not part of a community, making it highly unlikely that it has any competition or any defences.
Gene retention is like lactose tolerance—if you don't use it, you'll lose it. For animals, this typically takes a few thousand years. For bacteria it happens much more quickly. They're very simple organisms, and they're very good at adapting, but only if they've had time to adjust to their new setting. In this case, every single one of its (probably several thousand) genes has spent millions of years being fine-tuned for the most boring environment possible. It has absolutely no hope.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified," he added.'"
shittiest name ever!
Could be worse. Could be 'Odo'.
"The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Yakir Aharonov
Just dress it up in Latin -
Inexploratus incognitus
Sounds much more erudite.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
More like Nuclear Chemistry if you ask me. Where else is the Chromosomal DNA found?
Thank God I, Mr. Pedantic, got here just in time, to ruin your joke with unsolicited facts: bacteria do not have a cell nucleus.
700 million years (or more!)
Uhm, where did you get that figure? 700 million years is two supercontinent cycles ago - Antarctica was slightly north of the equator then. The antarctic ice cap didn't even start to form until the end of the Eocene. According to wikipedia, lake Vostok may have been isolated for the past 15 to 25 million years.