[meteorite-list] Underground Bacteria

Thu Oct 26 12:37:04 EDT 2006

Dear Pete,
  Yes, this was posted early by Ron Baalke;
nevertheless it is an interesting paper for those that
missed it the first time.  Currently, we (The Tokyo
University) are studying bacteria that I collected
from two oil wells in NE Colorado.  The samples came
from a depth of 1456 meters below the surface.  Thank
you for your posting and Ron`s earlier posting.  Best,
Dirk Ross..Tokyo

--- Pete Pete <rsvp321 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies if this was posted earlier - I may have
> missed it.
> 
> 
> 
>
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/13/72E53/index.xml?section=newsreleases
> 
> Abstract
> 
> Long-Term Sustainability of a High-Energy,
> Low-Diversity Crustal Biome
> 
> By Li-Hung Lin, Pei-Ling Wang, Douglas Rumble,
> Johanna Lippmann-Pipke, Erik 
> Boice, Lisa M. Pratt, Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Eoin
> L. Brodie, Terry C. 
> Hazen, Gary L. Andersen, Todd Z. DeSantis, Duane P.
> Moser, Dave Kershaw, and 
> T. C. Onstott
> 
> Geochemical, microbiological, and molecular analyses
> of alkaline saline 
> groundwater at 2.8 kilometers depth in Archaean
> metabasalt revealed a 
> microbial biome dominated by a single phylotype
> affiliated with thermophilic 
> sulfate reducers belonging to Firmicutes. These
> sulfate reducers were 
> sustained by geologically produced sulfate and
> hydrogen at concentrations 
> sufficient to maintain activities for millions of
> years with no apparent 
> reliance on photosynthetically derived substrates.
> 
> 
> News Releases
> All News Releases | « Previous News Release | Next
> News Release » For 
> immediate release: October 20, 2006
> Media contact: Chad Boutin, (609) 258-5729,
> cboutin at princeton.edu
> Two miles underground, strange bacteria are found
> thriving
> A Princeton-led research group has discovered an
> isolated community of 
> bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives
> all of its energy from 
> the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from
> sunlight. According to 
> members of the team, the finding suggests life might
> exist in similarly 
> extreme conditions even on other worlds.
> 
> The self-sustaining bacterial community, which
> thrives in nutrient-rich 
> groundwater found near a South African gold mine,
> has been isolated from the 
> Earth's surface for several million years. It
> represents the first group of 
> microbes known to depend exclusively on geologically
> produced hydrogen and 
> sulfur compounds for nourishment. The extreme
> conditions under which the 
> bacteria live bear a resemblance to those of early
> Earth, potentially 
> offering insights into the nature of organisms that
> lived long before our 
> planet had an oxygen atmosphere.
> 
> The scientists, who hail from nine collaborating
> institutions, had to burrow 
> 2.8 kilometers beneath our world's surface to find
> these unusual microbes, 
> leading the scientists to their speculations that
> life could exist in 
> similar circumstances elsewhere in the solar system.
> 
> "What really gets my juices flowing is the
> possibility of life below the 
> surface of Mars," said Tullis Onstott, a Princeton
> University professor of 
> geosciences and leader of the research team. "These
> bacteria have been cut 
> off from the surface of the Earth for many millions
> of years, but have 
> thrived in conditions most organisms would consider
> to be inhospitable to 
> life. Could these bacterial communities sustain
> themselves no matter what 
> happened on the surface? If so, it raises the
> possibility that organisms 
> could survive even on planets whose surfaces have
> long since become 
> lifeless."
> 
> Onstott's team published its results in the Oct. 20
> issue of the journal 
> Science. The research group includes first author
> Li-Hung Lin, who performed 
> many of the analyses as a doctoral student at
> Princeton and then as a 
> postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution.
> 
> "These bacteria are truly unique, in the purest
> sense of the word," said 
> Lin, now at National Taiwan University. "We know how
> isolated the bacteria 
> have been because analyses of the water that they
> live in showed that it's 
> very old and hasn't been diluted by surface water.
> In addition, we found 
> that the hydrocarbons in the environment did not
> come from living organisms, 
> as is usual, and that the source of the hydrogen
> needed for their 
> respiration comes from the decomposition of water by
> radioactive decay of 
> uranium, thorium and potassium."
> 
> 
> Because the groundwater the team sampled to find the
> bacteria comes from 
> several different sources, it remains difficult to
> determine specifically 
> how long the bacteria have been isolated. The team
> estimates the time frame 
> to be somewhere between three and 25 million years,
> implying that living 
> things are even more adaptable than once thought.
> 
> "We know surprisingly little about the origin,
> evolution and limits for life 
> on Earth," said biogeochemist Lisa Pratt, who led
> Indiana University 
> Bloomington's contribution to the project.
> "Scientists are just beginning to 
> study the diverse organisms living in the deepest
> parts of the ocean, and 
> the rocky crust on Earth is virtually unexplored at
> depths more than half a 
> kilometer below the surface. The organisms we
> describe in this paper live in 
> a completely different world than the one we know at
> the surface."
> 
> That subterranean world, Onstott said, is a
> lightless pool of hot, 
> pressurized salt water that stinks of sulfur and
> noxious gases humans would 
> find unbreathable. But the newly discovered
> bacteria, which are distantly 
> related to the Firmicutes division of microbes that
> exist near undersea 
> hydrothermal vents, flourish there.
> 
> "The radiation allows for the production of lots of
> sulfur compounds that 
> these bacteria can use as a high-energy source of
> food," Onstott said. "For 
> them, it's like eating potato chips."
> 
> But the arrival of the research team brought one
> substance into the 
> underground world that, though vital to human
> survival, proved fatal to the 
> microbes -- air from the surface.
> 
> "These critters seems to have a real problem with
> being exposed to oxygen," 
> Onstott said. "We can't seem to keep them alive
> after we sample them. But 
> because this environment is so much like the early
> Earth, it gives us a 
> handle on what kind of creatures might have existed
> before we had an oxygen 
> atmosphere."
> 
> Onstott said that many hundreds of millions of years
> ago, some of the first 
> bacteria on the planet may have thrived in similar
> conditions, and that the 
> newly discovered microbes could shed light on
> research into the origins of 
> life on Earth.
> 
> "These bacteria are probably close to the base of
> the tree for the bacterial 
> domain of life," he said. "They might be
> genealogically quite ancient. To 
> find out, we will need to compare them to other
> organisms such as Firmicutes 
> and other such heat-loving creatures from deep sea
> vents or hot springs."
> 
> The research team is building a small laboratory 3.8
> kilometers beneath the 
> surface in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa
> to conduct further study 
> of the newly discovered ecosystem, said Onstott, who
> hopes the findings will 
> be of use when future space probes are sent to seek
> life on other planets.
> 
> "A big question for me is, how do these creatures
> sustain themselves?" 
> Onstott said. "Has this one strain of bacteria
> evolved to possess all the 
> characteristics it needs to survive on its own, or
> are they working with 
> other species of bacteria? I'm sure they will have
> more surprises for us, 
> and they may show us one day how and where to look
> for microbes elsewhere."
> 
> Other authors of this work include Johanna
> Lipmann-Pipke of 
> GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Germany; Erik Boice
> of Indiana University; 
> Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of
> Toronto; Eoin L. Brodie, Terry 
> C. Hazen, Gary L. Andersen and Todd Z. DeSantis of
> Lawrence Berkeley 
> National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.; Duane P.
> Moser of the Desert Research 
> Institute, Las Vegas; and Dave Kershaw of the
> Mponeng Mine, Anglo Gold, 
> Johannesburg, South Africa.
> 
> Pratt and Onstott have collaborated for years as
> part of the 
> Indiana-Princeton-Tennessee Astrobiology Institute
> (IPTAI), a NASA-funded 
> research center focused on designing instruments and
> probes for life 
> detection in rocks and deep groundwater on Earth
> during planning for 
> subsurface exploration of Mars. IPTAI's
> recommendations to NASA will draw on 
> findings discussed in the Science report.
> 
> This work was also supported by grants from the
> National Science Foundation, 
> the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science
> Council of Taiwan, the 
> Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
> Canada, Deutsche 
> Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research
> Foundation) and the Killam 
> Fellowships Program.
> 
> More information about the discovery can be found at
> 
> http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/4229.html
> and 
>
http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/news_releases/news_2006_1019.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/13/72E53/index.xml?section=newsreleases
> 
>
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