In 2010, Japanese scientists on Expedition 329 of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program's Expedition (IODP), through nearly 6,000 meters of seawater, lowered a drill.
The drill bit sank in pelagic clay, a recent study reveals, bacteria emerged from the sediments that managed to revive.
Several geological eras later
The study results, published in Nature Communications, point out that very few bacteria were found, barely between 100 and 3,000 per cubic centimeter. But by feeding them, most of them revived.
In fact, they doubled in number every five days (E. coli bacteria in the laboratory double in about 20 minutes), increasing their numbers up to ten thousand times.
Surprisingly, most microbes were, like us, oxygen-breathing forms. In fact, the sediment from which they were extracted was full of oxygen, but what they were missing was food.
Based on all the evidence—the tight quarters, lack of feeding, and rapid resuscitation—researchers believe it is likely that most of the bacteria in this depleted sediment have been alive but dormant for at least 100 million years. These microbes, protected from radiation and cosmic rays by a thick layer of ocean and sediment, had survived several geological eras. And the only observable side effect is that they reproduced a little more slowly.
Recall that 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by marine sediments, whose microbial residents represent between one tenth and one half of all the microbial biomass on Earth. That is There are plenty of Methuselah microbes down there waiting to be discovered. (and reanimated).
–
The news
Closer to immortal bacteria: they have been resurrected after spending 100 million years on the seabed
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.