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Science

Bacteria Revived After 250 Million Years 251

Posted by timothy from the bowhead-whales?-turtles?-pshaw! dept.
Cruachan writes: "Reuters reports that scientists in the United States have revived a 250-million-year-old bacteria that is believed to be the oldest living creature ever discovered. (The story is no longer available on the Reuters Web site.) The bacterium that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs was in a state of suspended animation in an ancient salt crystal in an underground cavern near Carlsbad, New Mexico." This is one of the most amazing things I've heard in a long time. [Updated 19 Oct.14:00GMT by timothy:] Reuters has since pulled it; look below for more links :)

Links that work are tough to come by sometimes -- emmett sent one to to BBC Coverage (with pictures!), while several folks contributed others, including this unnamed correspondent, who writes: "An article in the L.A. Times has an interesting story about a revived microbe which might have been locked in a crystal of salt for 250 million years." Additionally, readers pointed to the Reuters story, hosted on yahoo! Thanks for the links, everyone.
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Bacteria Revived After 250 Million Years More

Bacteria Revived After 250 Million Years

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  • I'd rather have our last words be "oops" than "oh, well, too bad we never got anything accomplished."

    People who refuse to take risks are so missing out. Why don't you go secure yourself in a fortress and never come out? You know, walking is a very unsafe activity.

    -Matthead

  • How do you think we got to the stage we are today? If scientists didn't take risks we would still be banging rocks together (oh no, sorry - we might get shards in our eyes). Obviously these scientists will have taken containment precautions. Most comments in this stream seem to think that a few men in white coats found a lump of salt and put it in some water - hey presto! Instant life! The odds are this will lead to all sorts of new discoveries about our planet's history, and technologies including medicines for the future.

  • If that's your point of view, get cracking. You've got a lot of work to do to convince people. Maybe you should start a cult with poison Kool-Aid.
  • Evolution is a process of iterative adaptation toward perfection - perfection within one's biological niche, anyway. There have got to be plateaus, right? Maybe Bacillus was pretty close to begin with.
  • I got the impression your antagonist feels that it's OK to do whatever we want because we are so insignificant in the long-term we can't affect anything.

    Something I happen to disagree with quite strongly. This is the kind of argument entusiasts of the internal combustion engine use to justify there fun, despite the obvious harm it causes.
  • Sorry. I'm just annoyed at all these people on this board who think that life is a bad scifi flick.

    You know, the sad part is that most things that happen in life would leave us howling with laughter if we saw a plot that dumb in a movie.

    Works of fiction have a restriction that they need to be believable for the audience to accept them. Reality has no such restriction.

    --
  • I have older bacteria living on what used to be meatloaf in the back of my fridge =)

    (yes I know there is a difference between bacteria and mold/fungus... it's meant as a joke)

    E.
  • Here [washingtonpost.com] is a link to the post article. no login reguired
  • Please 250 million year old bacteria..
    our bacteria can kick its damn microscopic ass!

  • I mean, how do we know 100% for sure.
    Who's to say that bacteria, especially bacteria
    from 250 million years ago are not like chickens
    (which, in fact, are closely related to dinosaurs)
    in that, when they have their heads chopped off, they tend to run around a bit in the garden and
    then sort of fall over and squirm.
    Maybe the so-called scientist that probed this
    salt crystal with his S.C.P.D (salt crystal probing device) just got a little bit careless and somehow "laser beamd" the head off of the bacteria causing it mimick the behavioural patterns of a chicken (a distant relative).

    Yet another case of "sloppy science" methinks.

  • It is no different with possible escaping herbicide resistance genes from genetically modified crop. The 'superweed' only has a competitive edge when sprayed with herbicide, and in the absence of that factor, it loses out over the centuries, because of the tiny amount of energy it wastes on synthesising the herbicide resistance proteins.

    I could not resist this troll...
    Let's not be too hasty in letting GE 'superweeds' off the hook. Take Bt Corn, for example, which has a resistance to the pesticide Bt, and which it also produces throughout the entire plant, including the root system.
    When sprayed on the surface of tha plant, Bt breaks down to less or non-toxic constituant parts over a season or so. The pesticide produced by Btends up deep in the soil where it "binds tightly to clays and hummic acids" and breaks down at a much slower rate -- samples taken up to 30 months after the plant had died showed no decrease in the amount of Bt in the soil.
    Thus, over few short seasons, Bt corn can pollute a field to levels even worse than those produced by planting "regular" corn, and spraying regularly.

    See the article&l t;/a> (enter "Insecticidal toxin in root exudates from Bt corn" in the search field) in [nature.com]Nature magazine [nature.com] for a more detailed examination of this issue.

  • And no real Christians is ever stark-mad raving loony.

    Then would you care to explain why some post names and addresses of doctors who perform or have performed abortions, for the sake of others terrorizing them? Not to mention that some managed to convince the Kansas school board to stop teaching evolution.

  • "more likely"

    There you go.

    What are the chances that it's harmless? I don't know. Is it 50% harmless? 75% likely to be harmless? 90% likely to be completely harmless...

    There is no possible way to know for sure, no organisms from that long ago can be guaranteed to act a certain way.

    And there is a very real possibility that it could be something which would completely wipe the planet of life as we know it.

    And they are bringing it to life for no reason other than "well... that's kind of neat."

    People take too much for granted. The last words uttered on this planet will be "oops"

    ________

  • THANK GOD for CPR!!
  • Or New York. Oh, wait, that movie sucked major @$$. Nevermind.
  • Hmm, this might explain why my old P133 gets so moody after running Win98SE for several hours straight.
  • The implications of this find is actually far more far reaching. 1: lifeforms could be stored for long period of time and then revived and re-released into the ecosystem which reintroduces primitive genes back into the gene pool. A small scale example is the recurrent chloera epidemics of india. One hypothesis is that artic ice actually freezes the pathogens and then rereleases them back to the environment when the ice melts. So there's always the possibility that smallpox is prozen in some ice somewhere out in the wild. (Of course this perticular bacterium have very little chance of harming us. because it missed too many years.) 2. Life forms could go into suspended animation long enough to withstand the trip from one solar system to another.
  • So if the bacteria is causing problems, we can just apply a SERVICE PACK and then everything will be OKAY.

  • Why do we always consider ourselves being so importantant that we can meddle in mother earths affairs?

    Que? What's feeling important (or "importantant" for that matter) got to do with it? Something was discovered. Somebody wanted to figure out more about it. That's what humans do. We've been doing it as long as we've been around.
    And what is this "mother Earth's affairs" crap? Do you believe the Earth is sentient? That it has a plan for this bacteria, and we're screwing up this plan?

    It's human arrogance that makes us think, we are important in nature ...

    So then you would have us just sit around on rocks all day, avoiding meddling in "mother Earth's affairs?"
    And learn how to use commas. Yours makes your sentence contradict itself.

    Pete

  • hahahahah! you made my day.
  • So can I and I did a little research. The following links offer a glimpse at bacteria evolution and also demonstrate that this has happened before without harm.

    Bacteria evolve at a furious rate and we can expect new varieties to appear for any environment provided. They live where it is cold, where it is hot, and even in space! This article http://www.sciam.com/explorations/072196exploratio ns.html [sciam.com] features an interesting experiment where bacteria were observed to evolve several times in four years.

    This article http://www.sciam.com/1096issue/1096onstott.html#1 [sciam.com] covers research of bacteria found in oil deposits and other unlikely places. Bacteria found in oil can be 300 million years old, and have certianly gotten out before. They get away with and without man's help, and you deal with it every day.

    Now get back to work, everybody! No more strikes and millsmashing, execpt you poor loosers at dot coms. Dot com-ers can just go home.

  • It's one of my ancestors! I always knew I was different... Not really, although reviving an unknown strain of bacteria that old.. Great, they mentioned something like this in an article from the other day, 20 Ways The World Could End [slashdot.org]. Time to purchase stock in biosuits ;). Actually, we have nothing to worry about at all, the scientists will be careful and keep it contained and not take it home to show the kids

    Ennui [ennuiweb.com]

  • While the following search [google.com] may not find anything on bacteria in salt, it does turn up some great articles on 300 million year old bacteria in oil. This has been postulated since the 1920's. People pooh-poohed this too by claiming that all the samples were contaminated, but it looks like the microbes were there.

    Bacteria in salt? I would not be too sceptical. Stranger things have happened.

    Eeeewwwww! Bacteria in petrolium!

  • ...without doing the actual traveling. If you have noticed - we first got cloning and now bacterial revival... what's next? In a way, we humans are obsessed with the idea of time travel - however, if we can't go back, then let's bring them here. It didn't take the scientists long to try to introduce cloning to extinct animals. [slashdot.org] Now, instead of "let's bring them back" theory - it's "let's wake them up" - In way it's a scary thought but there are benefits. Firstly - and the most obvious is to see how life was then with these organisims and gives us a good chance of understanding what went on then. Secondly - Reduce the extinction rate in animals. Finaly - finding possible cures to diseases and this is not a far-fetched thought. And before the bottle-tops start poping - i believe these scientist have nitrogen tanks sitting all over the place ready to burst in case of an "accident". Then we can say - that part of our human history included the ice-age. And that was when a scientist tripped over his shoe lace - was it? :)

  • Pfagh! Fear mongering! (Score:5)

    by WickedDyno ( 107606 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:39PM (#693707)
    99.9% of all bacteria in the world just hang out and metabolize whatever comes their way. Only a very small percentage are pathogenic, and the chances are that this one would be are miniscule. If it was, what would it be doing in a salt crystal? Most pathogenic bacteria live in organisms or ex-organisms. Even if it were pathogenic, it would be adapted to the organisms of 250 million years ago, not today's. And finally, microbiologists culture potentially pathogenic organisms all the time without a problem using simple common sense and caution. As long as those two are applied in this case as well, there's really nothing to worry about. Methinks you've been watching X-files too much.
  • The point is that all these riscs you mention equally apply to other species of Bacillus, of which you will find millions if not billions of specimens in the dirt you scrape from under your fingernail after working in the garden.

    The 'we just don't know' argument is obsolete. We do know. We have a very good understanding of how a Bacillus behaves, and what could potentially make them dangerous.

    You can bet your life on the absolute certainty that if these ancient bacteria have a gene that makes them unusually competitive in our normal environment, there is absolutely no way that gene just died out on the surface.

    All this aside, I don't believe for one second that these cells really are 250 million years old. Even if you could stop chemical degradation, over a timespan that long, you may even have to take nuclear decay into account. Radioactive isotopes (C-13 for instance) in the DNA as well as the repair proteins decaying, leaving holes behind. The bacteria probably became entrapped much later, perhaps only a few thousand years ago.
  • And we DO know what they died of. It was big, bad, came out of the sky and made a giant crater in the Yucatan and left a layer of iridium-rich sediment all over the planet.

    Uh-Oh, Iridium-rich sediment all over the planet! We better convince Motorola not to burn up Iridium in our athmosphere, or were all going to be in trouble!

    okay, so it's not funny... =-)
  • Well now we just have to speculate for 700 posts on an incomplete article and on the incompetent ramblings of a team of hot grits trollers.

    --

  • Reports of ancient bacteria recovered from the likes of rock, coal, and 2,400 year-old Egyptian temples have not stood up to scientific scrutiny in the past.

    Before we go off and get into a tizzy over the end of the world & such, shouldn't we consider the above words found in the last paragraph of the BBC article.

  • Go figure, some one had to say it.

  • I can already see (Score:5)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:40PM (#693713) Homepage
    I can already see the luddites shouting about how dangerous it can be and how science should let it rest. However, this kind of thing has undoubtedly happened many times by chance: an ancient salt deposit is flooded after an earthquake, awakening ancient bacteria. If these bacteria are dangerous they are probably already here anyway.

    ----
  • I wonder if the Bacteria has the same problem that Austin Powers had?
    "That's not mine!"

    ys
  • Hear, hear! It seems like the population of /. is largely intelligent, but then there's this paranoid streak a mile wide. Freaking about ancient bacteria, thinking the government exists specifically to oppress and manipulate every one of us, individually... the list goes on. Where does it come from? A healthy dose of skepticism, coupled with common sense and an ability to see things from a bigger perspective, can go a long way in this world, folks.

    Well, I guess that was kind of off-topic, but after reading this thread and the comments about the Sally Struthers satire, I felt it had to be said.

    Wraithmaster
    www.wraithmaster.com [wraithmaster.com] -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

  • The BBC article [bbc.co.uk] states that:

    The crystals were in a drill sample taken from an air intake shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the world's first underground dump for radioactive waste left over from making nuclear weapons.

    When they were extracted from the crystals in a laboratory and placed in a nutrient solution, the microorganisms revived and began to grow.

    So now that we know that there is 250 million year old bacteria down there that revives when placed in liquid. Is it still a good idea to pump liquid radiactive waste down there? (cue music from twilight zone)

  • The news is based on some articles to be published in an upcoming issue of Nature. The actual Nature articles require free registration. Here is a link to the Nature [nature.com] news item.
  • I live 20 miles away from Carlsbad. No wonder the salt in my soup tasted a little stale.
  • It is the return of BLOB! Mad scientists are at it again! Seriously though, aren't some of the above posters overreacting a little bit? It seems very unlikely (the word impossible comes to mind) to me that a 250 M years old bacteria will wipe out the human race. It wasn't even on discover.com's list! Now only a small step to revive the dinosaurs themselves...
  • If it lived for 250 million years in a salt crystal, it's going to be awfully hard to kill if it is pathogenic....... DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!
  • If there's one thing that replies to this article have shown, its that most /.'s do NOT have adequate knowledge in basic biological sciences. Yet they still feel obligated to spout uninformed information as if they are being so observant or insightful. Knowing how to hack a kernel or write C/Perl/Whatever code does NOT make you some magical scientific genius.

    And for the last freakin' time, Jurassic Park, The Andromea Strain, Gattaca, etc. are MOVIES. They are not documentaries or credible scientific sources, much to half of /. reader's dismay! They are FICTION, based on some science, but FICTION none the less!!

    Previous posters, such as WickedDyna are correct. The vast majority of bacteria (thousands of species/strains) are non-pathenogenic. It's not that unusual for bacterium to "hibernate" in some environments - it forms a tough "capsule" that almost completely resists drying out, harsh pH and other hostile conditions. It has been long known and believed that this allows bacteria to survive long periods of time, this is just a rare, extreme example.

    It also looks as if this strain is halophilic (salt-loving) and that also makes it unlikely that it is somehow pathenogenic. As someone also said, most pathenogenic bacteria require living hosts or physiological environments to survive - not just some HIGHLY hostile (to most strains)salt pool!

    Scientists and microbiologists are NOT idiots. They know that the chances are ridiculously low that this strain has potential harm. And hell, these people handle stuff like Ebola, and Hantavirus, and other dangerous bacteria routinely. Too many people here have been watching too many bad SF movies and not enough books on the subject.

    Sincerely,
    Kevin Christie
    kwchri@wm.edu
    (senior in biology going on to biology graduate degree)
  • It's one of my ancestors! I always knew I was different...
    Sssh! That bacteria was found in southeast New Mexico. Next thing you know, the Comanches will be petitioning for it to be reburied under the provisions of NAGPRA (the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act), and then the Asatru Folk Assembly will file a counter-suit claiming that they recognize one particular bacterium as the ancestor of Woden so it belongs to them, and then...
  • This further evidence of bacterial spore durability significantly increases the chance that we have been exporting mono-cellular critters on board the Pioneer and Voyager probes etc. 'If' these probes were ever to come into contact with alien life, the bacteria would give the aliens a much greater insight into Earth-based life than any plaque.

    Which leads onto another idea - why not stick bacterial spores in a suitably protected part of the next probe with a message stuck into a nonsense part of their genetic code. It might not be the most efficient way to say 'hi' but it would have panache.

  • Coming soon to a theatre near you... (Score:3)

    by volpe ( 58112 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:13AM (#693724)
    Paramount Pictures Presents...

    PROTEROZOIC PARK

    Watch as fantasy turns to fear in this action packed adventure when an archeologist who didn't quite think things through opens up a theme park full of prehistoric-bacteria-infested salt-water slides, boat rides, and swimming pools. As penicillin supplies run short, a mass epidemic breaks out, threatening to destroy humanity, unless Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern can save the day.
  • But the law of averages quite clearly states that
    at least one organism somewhere is capable of
    reproduction in a post-cranium physical state.

    This could be just that organism.

  • Say, that pulp looks familiar to me...no wait. Nope. I Don't recognize it.

    Pete

  • Also, beacuse if you happen to know about the people in London who first isolated the penicillin type which occurs in some penicillium molds you'll know that it is highly toxic.

    The penicillins are chemically altered versions.

    Elgon

    PS - Little known shooting-legend (alas, pobably untrue): Alexander Fleming left his petri dishes over the weekend because he was going to a shooting match.
  • Except that it wasn't under any evolutionary pressure during those 250 million years, so that number doesn't mean very much. In a sense, it's actually had 250 million years less to evolve than every other life form on Earth.

  • poof. (Score:1)

    by marius ( 11069 )
    And /. reports that Reuters needs a better backend for their news. That, or they expire really fast and want you to keep up to date. *sigh* Guess I'll have to take the word of the poster here because Reuters doesn't want me to see it.

  • Link doesn't work (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:24PM (#693730)
    Go to http://www.reuters.com/news.jhtml ?ty pe=science [reuters.com] and click on the link
  • Spot checking the comments, I nearly dismised you as being a smokedot regular. ;)
  • The actual story is here [reuters.com]

  • Don't worry (Score:5)

    by rve ( 4436 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @12:09AM (#693733)
    You mustn't think of bacteria as a 'disease'. They are self sufficient, independant organisms, and they are absolutely everywhere. Only a very small fraction of them is adapted to living inside the human body.

    It is extremely unlikely that a bacterium adapted to survive in high saline conditions, and survive extremely long periods of being dead and desiccated can compete under normal conditions with the organisms already there.

    It is no different with possible escaping herbicide resistance genes from genetically modified crop. The 'superweed' only has a competitive edge when sprayed with herbicide, and in the absence of that factor, it loses out over the centuries, because of the tiny amount of energy it wastes on synthesising the herbicide resistance proteins.

  • Somewhat worrisome... (Score:3)

    by j.e.hahn ( 1014 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:24PM (#693734)
    This is troubling. Considering that the biodiversity when this bacterium evolved, and the environment it was adapted to, there is NO telling what would/will happen if/when it gets released into our ecosystem.

    Imagine all the problems introducing foreign specieis into ecosystems has caused. cats, dogs and pigs made the dodo extinct. Who knows, maybe ancient bacteria will make us extinct.

    Scary thought.

  • Insightful (Score:5)

    by Nicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) <nicoaltiva&gmail,com> on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:43PM (#693740) Journal

    Or it could be a spermatozoid from Gozilla, and were it to enter in contact with an ovula from Gozillette, we would have a major catastrophe in Tokyo!


    --

  • Okay, I'm a little off. I studied evolution a LONG time ago.

    Evolution is not a religion. And no real Christians is ever stark-mad raving loony

    How is it not a religion? Is there any REAL scientific proof that evolution is true? Not the last time I studied evolution and not now. I admit, there is the same amount of evidence for Christianity as there is evolution. But you evolutionists BLINDLY accept that evolution is true just as Christians do.

    What makes evolution not a religion and Christianity a religion?

    From,

  • Re:Oh, that's just great (Score:3)

    by -brazil- ( 111867 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:44PM (#693744) Homepage
    "Lost" resistance? You don't have any genetic "resistance" to ANY of the microorganisms that exist today, either - you develop antibodies agains new foreign microorganisms all the time, that's a perfectly natural process. Just being old doesn't make a bacterium miraculously deadly.
  • That's all very well. But I still say those
    scientists took an unnecessary risk in bringing
    that little thing back to life. Don't forget
    that in MIB, Orion the cat was carrying an entire
    universe in it's collar. It's therefore possible
    that a bacteria could conceal a whole solar system
    of mutant axe warriors hell bent on rape, pillage
    and tax evasion.

    God help us in the future.
  • No shit ... what are you trying to tell us here?

    --

  • The authors said extraordinary efforts were made against contaimination. However, that contamination is very easy. After the fourth or fifth such find, maybe I'll believe it.

  • What would be certainly more interesting than bringing the thing back to life would be sequencing its DNA, completely, and finding what it is genetically most similar to, and then contrasting the differences. And besides, who's to say that no form of message is present in the DNA of this creature, just waiting to be read by whoever finds the thing and has the intelligence to decode it? We're talking about sending DNA-encoded messages out with our deep-space explorers, but nobody can patent the idea if we find prior art, and I believe that this counts as that. More importantly, though, the time scale involved and the slight possibility that it got to New Mexico from somewhere much farther away (not any more slight than mankind evolving from a similarly-introduced bacterium) means that it's possible, however unlikely, that there's a meaningful message hidden in its DNA. It may be incomprehensibly tiny odds, but then again, we're the ones looking for ancient lifeforms in salt crystals in Carlsbad Cavern.
  • You ask only one side of a two-sided question. What happens when the bacteria is unleashed into our environment and can handle how things have changed. It might immediately die from the changed levels of gasses in the atmosphere, different levels of radiation reaching the surface of the earth, ot might be gobbled up and digested by a couple of dust mites leaping of this hypothetical clutses hand.

  • NOT QUITE dead :) (Score:3)

    by matek ( 101962 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @12:38AM (#693771)
    The links is just wrong - if you go on Reuters site, you can use their direct link to the article (it's in "Science" section. Url is: http://www.reuters.com/home.jhtml [reuters.com].
  • Excuse me? Think much?

    The only reason why bacteria are immune to antibiotics today is because we use them (abuse them) so much. There were almost no antibiotics 250 million years ago in most environments, certainly none of the ones we use today.

    Dynasaurs [sic] didn't have antibiotics, and were not very similar physiologically to humans. The chances are almost nil that this bacterium is pathogenic anyway -- 99% of bacteria aren't.

    Your knee-jerk fear mongering is disturbing. Why don't you actually learn something about immunology, epidemiology, or microbiology -- or just general bio -- before you go making stupid statements like "this could make AIDS look like a 24 hour cold."

    Here's a fscking clue -- AIDS is virulent against us because it evolved to attack us specifically. _Bacillus permians_ could not have.

  • Re:Oh, that's just great (Score:3)

    by WickedDyno ( 107606 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:52PM (#693784)
    Why the FUCK do people see the word "bacterium" and immediately think evil, disease, plague, and other bad things?

    99.9% of all bacteria on this planet just hang out and chemo/photosynthesize or soak up nutrients. The number of pathogenic bacteria is miniscule, as is the chance that _Bacillus permians_ will turn out to be one.
  • Doesn't this contradict both religions? Contrary to popular fundie belief, evolution is not a religion. It is completely independant from any and all religious beliefs. When reading scientific articles, I always expect them to have something saying "25 billion years," et cetera. This can be easily explained - you are stupid (or at least ignorant, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). The Earth is only 4.6 billion years old. The universe is much older, but I think current estimates put it at about 14 billion years, though I could be wrong. But, this article doesn't. It says that it was from before the dinosaurs but, according to evolutionists, dinosaurs live way back when 100+ billion years ago. Again you are stupid. Are you a troll? Congrats, you got a response from me. It says 250 Million which is considerably shorter. It dosn't follow evolutionary beliefs, nor does it follow christian beliefs. Christians (for the most part) believe that the world isn't very old, say 5,000 years ('round-about). Actually, they say 6,000. You don't even know what your own beliefs are. 250 Million is considerable longer than 5,000 years. No shit. Those are just my ponderings... They say a mind that has been stretched will never return to its original shape. What you need is a full-body wedgie.


    -------

  • Earth crawling with bacteria to ten miles deep (Score:3)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @03:45AM (#693789)
    The crust of the earth, at least the sedimentary formations, appear to have life as deep as the sedimentents go (to ten miles and not above 120C). The volume of this biomass rivals that above the soil. Also life may play a large role in geological processes- peripitating iron, uranium, gold carbonates; changing the physical parameters of rocks to facilatate plate tectonics- and so on. A fringe hypothesis by a Cornell astronomer has life manufacturing nearly unlimited oil from deep gas. Earth as a the living Gaia may be more realistic than previously supposed.

  • Unfrozen Caveman Bacterium!

    "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know much about your world. I look around and see steel beasts racing down the streets, growling and spitting smoke. I don't know how to operate your 'personal computers' or 'automatic teller machines'. Your ways frighten me! There is one thing I do know, however, and that is that we must outlaw all antibiotics immediately before any more of my harmless brothers are slaughtered. Thank you for your time."

  • Very old silicon based life forms or something?

    Now that's one hell of a way to get rid of your competition. Just picture the newspapers:

    Newsflash!
    In an interview today with a spokesperson from a leading company in processors the statement "We're not having any difficulties in controlling this bacteria" was heard. This same spokesperson had no explanation for the fact that aside from the known 1.13 Ghz problems all other processors from their company are experiencing instability problems as well as spontanious desintegration. Multiple customers of this company have been known to complain about the fact that all of a sudden their computers stopped working after which a yellowish green goo started dripping out of it. We'll keep you updated on this one.

    I can really identify with you, so much.
  • Um, you don't have any actual knowledge about how the immune system works, do you? It's is completely non-specific and works on any kind of protein. There is no such thing as "discarded protection", antibodies are developed as they are needed against whatever comes up.
  • Ok, dittoboy...

    You're right, evolution is a cult. ;-) More specifically, it was Darwin's hoax to see if he could extinguish a nearly 2000-year-old religion.

    Sounds like you think the reason scientists have old earth/old universe theories is pure spite toward christianity.

    It takes a much greater leap of faith to accept evolution than Creationism. Evolution's tenets don't match up with reality. All the trans-evolution species (read: proof) have conveniently died out with no trace of fossils (and those hoaxes don't count!).

    No, they haven't. Witness the transation from fish to amphibian to reptile. They still exist. Of course, many have died out. Do you think fossilization happens to most animals? It needs a certain set of conditions.

    Also, there are only a handful of hoaxes, some of which were honest mistakes. They've all been retracted.

    Also, a natural representation of the fabricated geologic table (which classifies the ages of the Earth) is found nowhere in the Earth's crust, not even in the Grand Canyon.

    The Grand Canyon strikes me as a gigantic problem for young-earthers.

    There are tons more refutations, but I won't infuriate you any further with my anti-propaganda. Current science is eating away at the Theory of Evolution more and more every day.

    I've heard them all. Just last weekend, I went to a "Case for Creation" seminar put on by the ICR, and sat in an audience who kept yelling "Amen!" and "Praise Jesus!" at random. Every time the lecturer waved around another tired, blatantly false distortion or lie (like their gross misinterpretation of the Second Law of thermodynamics, for instance) the audience laughed with uproarious approval. They probably had an Old Tyme bookburning party after I left.

    Evolution is more than a theory, though; it is a cultural movement. It is one man's fantasies embraced by bigoted, hate-mongering intellectuals who have no goal but to bring about the downfall of Christianity.

    Young Earth Creationists are hate-mongering anti-intellectuals who think that scientists are trying to attack them.

    Guess what- scientists in a wide range of disciplines including cosmology, astronomy, biology, and geology don't even have you and your kind on their mind when they present their theories. They are pursuing a greater understanding. Every once in a while they might be reminded that there are people out there that can walk into any museum of natural history in cities across the globe, and flat out deny almost everything on display.

    Why is the belief in Evolution so bad? Here's a test: Would you flinch at shooting me dead? No? Why not? After all, I'm just a worthless mass of cells. People who are pro-choice-to-slaughter claim to have the "right" to execute their babies (up to 12 weeks old! after birth! This is based on court testimony concerning live-birth abortions) because they are not conscious, and therefore not real people.

    So an evolutionist must be a nihilist? I suggest you see what secular humanism is all about. Lack of a belief in a god does not imply a lack of morality. I personally would not shoot you, because my sense of morality is based upon the rights of others. I have no moral problem with a person doing something as long as they don't hurt somebody else. For the record, I'm against abortion except in cases of incest and health risks to the mother (she has rights too, after all).

    A person without the conscience of God in his heart will do anything if he can get away with it. Just like Hollow Man. I fear that the evolution movement will lead to a world of people like Hollow Man -- people who would kill anybody for selfish reasons. (I hear echoes of "It's MY body! It's my choice!")

    You're an idiot. People need not be Christians, or even theists, to function in a civil society.

    Evolution is evil because it is an assault on life, love, and civility.

    Evolution is a theory which attempts to explain the origins of the wide variety of species we see. Whatever it might influence people to beliefve does not have any bearing on its validity as a scientific theory.

    What is evolution? It is a hodgepodge of wild speculations by science fiction fanatics developed under the guise of "science".

    To be scientific, a theory must be falsifiable. When you seek only to find things which we do not currently know the answer to, and then argue that this is proof that "God did it", that's not science. If you don't like science, fine. But don't confuse science and faith.

    In contrast, the truth of Creationism is simple, elegant, and inescapable. How did life begin? We are created by a timeless, supernatural being. (How can something be timeless? I believe that there is no time; time is an illusion that humans perceive and use to define the relationships between events.)

    I agree that time is an illusion, and this is important to remember in the context of the Big Bang. See my post on that subject [slashdot.org].

    Everything is of God.

    Have a nice day :-)


    -------

  • Re:Yes it does (Score:3)

    by WickedDyno ( 107606 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:57PM (#693809)
    Think about it for a bit more than a moment.

    The human immune system is not designed to protect against specific enemies. It can adapt to attack most viruses, bacteria and parasites. What makes a pathogen successful against us is an ability to specifically fool those adaptive defenses. In the incredibly miniscule chance that _Bacillus permians_ turns out to be pathogenic, it will have adapted to fool the defenses of our remote ancestors at most. 250 million years ago true mammals hadn't even evolved yet. And even if, through some unbelievably tiny chance, affect humans, it would have no resistance whatsoever to any antibiotics because it has never ever experienced them before. So they'd be quite effective against it.

    And yes, evolution DOES keep old defenses around "just in case" -- it's called the immune system.
  • Chester PA?!

    What a shithole, no offense. I spent about 6 months there in the Sun Shipyards. I have never been to a worse town.

  • What makes evolution not a religion and Christianity a religion?

    Gee the science part, silly. Isn't it strange to see both anti-christians and so-called Christians like you bash me for stating two facts: (1) that the Earth is 5 billion years old, dinosaurs living from 130 million to 65 million years ago, (2) that good practicing Christians aren't at all, in the majority, loony?

  • Actually, since it's missed-out on 250 million years of evolution and exposure to anti-bacterial stuff it'll probably get whacked by some snot-nosed lab assistant's anti-persperant.
  • FYI: the orignal Gozilla movie is Japanese.

    --

  • To all those out there who think this is neccessarily a Bad Thing, think about this:

    - bacteria is helpful in creating antibiotics
    - in biotech, bacteria is used in creating
    human insulin
    - its used today to produce natural gas and
    detergents

    And who knows what other helpful things
    can come of this?

    That said, I hope they`re careful with the
    samples :)
  • > Sorry. I'm just annoyed at all these people on
    > this board who think that life is a bad scifi
    > flick.

    ROTFL it does seem that way doesn't it.

    > save that the vast majority of _Bacillus_
    > bacteria are nonpathogenic.

    How about a specific example...

    Whose ever eaten yogurt? guess what....its a live bacteria culture! Boil som emilk then let it cool in a covered pan to about 97 F....plop in some store bought yogurt - cover - keep it at about 97F for 24 hours

    The result? A whole crapload of tastey yogurt. mmmmm mix in some cucumbers, mint, and some black pepper....mmmm thank you lactobacillus acidopholus!

    -Steve
  • "Funny, ha-ha" or "Funny, oh my how ironic... *thud*"?

    Seriously though, there is just as much of a chance that this bacteria will be harmless to the current forms of earthly life. Now, mind you, if I was one of the scientists playing with this bacteria, I sure as Hell would adopt every single precaution I could, on the simple fact that I have no idea what it could do. Then I would begin the experimenting in earnest. I'd rather some rodents die for this advance in science rather then in cosmetics testing...

    Now, quite honestly, this does represent a good advance in science, because the scientists know it can be done now. One of the biggest obstacles in science is doing something that all the other scientists say can't be done.

    However, it is a far cry from being able to revive a simple strain of bacteria to bringing about a dinosaur theme park. (This never made sense to me... why recreate the carnivores?)

    Oh, and slightly back OT for the subject line, personally, I go with the asteroid smacking the planet theory for dinosaur death rather then some bacteria killing off all the dinos. Just a KT person, that's me...

    Kierthos
  • is whether this is a resurrected species of bacteria, or a 250 million year old specimen of a species which is still around today?
    If it is the latter, then you guys have nothing to worry about. If not, then all such research should be carefully quarantined. Even if it is one of the 99.99% of bacteria that are harmless, it might have unforseen environmental effects...

  • It happens all the time (Score:3)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @11:03PM (#693846) Journal


    So the report says that the bacterium was trapped in salt, buried somewhere deep in the ground.

    Well.. don't we eat rock-salts?

    I mean, millions of us have taken plenty of rock salt in our lives, and who knows how many millions of ancient bacteria which were "revived" in our tummies ?

  • Amiga coincidence? (Score:5)

    by oingoboingo ( 179159 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:26PM (#693858)
    Has anyone noticed a striking resemblance between this story and the Amiga resurrection one posted below it?

    A long-forgotten, primitive system is revived. A small population of geeks go "Wow". The rest of us go "Why the fuck?"

  • I'd hate to be the one who's gonna have to tell this bacterium that all his friends and relative have been dead for 250 million years.
  • Slash is eating the tag, so here is the URL. If it hoses up, it's reuters.com then science

    http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=sci ence&Repository=SCIENCE_REP&RepositorySt oryID=%2Fnews%2FIDS%2FScience%2FSCIENCE-BACTERIA-C REATURE-DC_NEW.XML

  • Re:It happens all the time (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @04:23AM (#693862)
    Salt that is mined from the earth is generally dissolved into brine, filtered, etc etc, and then recrystallized before it goes out for public consumption.

    The filtering process generally has filters small enough to remove most commonday bacteria, so I would suspect that these would have never gotten to the table as well if they did exist in the original rock salt.

  • Re:Here it is (Score:5)

    by Eminence ( 225397 ) <akbrandt@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:28PM (#693865) Homepage

    Naaah... it's already not there... they seem to change the URL each time. Nasty trick...

    However, Yahoo doesn't do that. Story is here [yahoo.com].

  • First, its a bacterium, not a virus. The differences are a fairly significant -- a bacterium is more clearly "alive", it reproduces on its own via mitosis (rather than hijacking the machinery of a host cell), and is significantly less robust (for instance, may be vulnerable to antibiotics).

    If memory serves (it's been several years since I last looked at this subject...)

    When a foreign object enters the system, it may be encountered by a macrophage. Your own cells normally are recognizable to the macrophage via some sort of identifying 'self' protein upon its outer structure, and can pass unmolested barring the occurence of certain auto-immune disorders. A foreign particle, however, may be consumed by the macrophage in its role as a system janitor of sorts.

    Macrophages can, essentially, present a protein suitable for identifying that foreign object -- if any are found, such as those on the cell wall of a bacterium -- to one type of T-cell, which coordinates an immune response. This may involve the replication of B-cells, which in turn produce antibodies specific to that foreign protein. Chemicals such as interleukins come into play here, if memory serves -- regulating replication and production. A second type of T-cell will target that foreign object as well during this phase.

    After the episode, you retain a number of the apppropriate T- and B-cells, so that the next time that exact protein is encountered, the overall immune response can happen much more quickly.

    HIV takes one approach to defeating the system -- it has basically evolved to conceal itself from, and (if memory serves) within the T-cells itself, thus circumventing the defense system. In addition, certain viruses and bacteria have high replication/mutation rates, which increases the probability that a specimen will change significantly to the point that to the immune system, it appears to be a new strain and new T- and B-cells have to be propagated...

    Immunity is never permanently off. One has to have a virulent strain -- perhaps many virulent strains -- simultaneously introduced in masse to circumvent the system completely.
  • Yeah, those damn luddirtes are always thinking cautiously. I mean, what's up with that?

    Technology for technology's sake, and damn the possible consequences which the scientists haven't really considered.

  • Someone had to ask it: (Score:3)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@tr u 7 h . o rg> on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:30PM (#693873) Homepage
    So what's this bacteria DO?

    I mean, what happens when an intern is swapping around petri dishes one night and he trips over his shoelaces? Does he dump into our modern world some parasite that absolutely nothing currently alive today has an immunity to?

    Or, even if it's a "good" bacteria, it could cause more harm than anything.

    Chalk my suspicion up to all kinds of media-fed paranoia about biological attacks and too many B-grade sci-films as a kid. ;)

    It is pretty astounding.. but considering what bringing domesticated animals into Australia did (as an off the shelf example), what's going to happen when we bring 250 million year old lifeforms back to life?

  • Extra-terrestrial? (Score:5)

    by headshrinker ( 37311 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:30PM (#693877)
    The BBC News this morning said that it was possibly extra-terrestrial. They've got the story on their site now at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_9 78000/978774.stm
    Interesting...

  • Re:Don't worry (Score:3)

    by michellem ( 110855 ) <michelle.murrain@net> on Thursday October 19, 2000 @04:32AM (#693878) Homepage
    You mustn't think of bacteria as a 'disease'. They are self sufficient, independant organisms, and they are absolutely everywhere. Only a very small fraction of them is adapted to living inside the human body.

    This is indeed true - but it is hubris for us to say that because of this, we should not worry about the potential implications - the truth is, we don't know enough to say "don't worry"!

    First off, there are the more general ecological issues to think about - how would this organism interact with the environment? Plenty of organisms eventually can't compete with other organisms in the local ecosystem, but can do plenty of damage on their way to extinction.

    Then, and of more concern to me, is the potential for DNA to be shared between this bacterium and it's potential relatives that still exist. Bacteria can share plasmid DNA between each other. I don't know how well this process happens between species of bacteria, but it is a process that can occur.

    Also, this bacteria might evolve quickly to be able to survive in some environments that could do damage to the ecosystem in ways we can't necessarily predict.

    In general, I guess my comment is that we think we know far more than we do. It's pretty dangerous to say, simply, "don't worry"

  • Ok, I really mangled that formatting so here it is again.

    Doesn't this contradict both religions?

    Contrary to popular fundie belief, evolution is not a religion. It is completely independant from any and all religious beliefs.

    When reading scientific articles, I always expect them to have something saying "25 billion years," et cetera.

    This can be easily explained - you are stupid (or at least ignorant, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). The Earth is only 4.6 billion years old. The universe is much older, but I think current estimates put it at about 14 billion years, though I could be wrong.

    But, this article doesn't. It says that it was from before the dinosaurs but, according to evolutionists, dinosaurs live way back when 100+ billion years ago.

    Again you are stupid. Are you a troll? Congrats, you got a response from me.

    It says 250 Million which is considerably shorter. It dosn't follow evolutionary beliefs, nor does it follow christian beliefs. Christians (for the most part) believe that the world isn't very old, say 5,000 years ('round-about).

    Actually, they say 6,000. You don't even know what your own beliefs are.

    250 Million is considerable longer than 5,000 years.

    No shit.

    Those are just my ponderings...

    They say a mind that has been stretched will never return to its original shape. What you need is a full-body wedgie.



    -------
  • The same story from abc news is here [go.com] ;.
  • Because it hasn't been doing anything.

    That's like using one of those cryogenic freeze/life support chambers from science fiction (like 2001 and 2010) and leaving a group of people in it for a billion years, and then taking them out and wondering why they haven't evolved. HELLO! They were FROZEN


    -------
  • I wonder how they found it?
    I mean they can have a general idea of where to look but bacteria are pretty small. The proverbial needle in a haystack.

    Defraggle
    Head monkey
    Dynamic League of discord POEE Cabal "Monkey"
  • cats, dogs and pigs made the dodo extinct.

    Wrong. Dutch people made the dodo extinct. They ate all of them. I should know, since I've lived in Mauritius (where the dodo used to live 400 years ago). See, my user name means Marutius in French.
  • if this bug is really 250million years old, it would be very interesting to see if they have antibiotic resistance genes, or even antibiotic resistance sequences contained in plasmids.

    let me explain: over the last few years we have heard this big scare over the increasing number of bacteria that can no longer be treated with normal antibiotics. We call these "superbugs" (e.g. VRE = vancomysin resistant enterococcus). This is a big concern in the medical community because of their inability to treat such illnesses.

    Antibiotic resistance has grown into a frightening spectre over the last few years, and it is largely blamed on our unchecked use of antibiotics: we use them not to treat but to prevent disease on a large scale. Farmers routinely add antibiotics to animal feed as a guard against infection. We buy antibacterial soap. crops are sprayed with antibiotic solutions to prevent crop loss due to disease.

    bacteria that are exposed to these antibiotics may not recieve a dose large enough to kill it. if this is so, then the bacteria can pass those resistance genes on to its progeny, which reproduce once every 20 minutes. these genetic sequences that are passed down to subsequent generations can even be transfered from bacteria to bacteria, so those novel gene sequences can be swapped, even with bacteria of different strains!

    we now see this everywhre... even bacteria in the soil and other "wild" bacteria (not grown in the lab) have penicillin resistance genes. so it is pretty exciting that bacteria that old was discovered. this bacteria can help answer questions as to the origins of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and could answer questions regarding our behavior with the proactive use of antibiotics.

  • Maybe a little too amazing... (Score:5)

    by Philom ( 24273 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @10:34PM (#693903)
    A quick search turns up this Science News article from June 1999, which appears to refer to work of the same researchers:
    http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/6_12_99/fob3 .htm
    The article questions whether the organisms found in the salt are nearly as old as their discovers claim. It suggests that contamination from many sources could also account for the find.

    Has any evidence turned up since 1999 that more conclusively supports these claims? This isn't clear from the Reuters story, and I don't think I'm going to believe it until I see some further proof.
  • Good grief. Your figures are all wrong. The Earth itself is only 5 billion years old (American billion!). The dinosaurs lived 150 to 65 million years ago.

    Evolution is not a religion. And no real Christians is ever stark-mad raving loony.

  • I think it is more likely that it comes out and dies, not being able to compete successfully with the bacteria alive now.

  • Why Dangerous? (Score:3)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @02:06AM (#693915) Homepage
    Many people assume the bacteria could do harmful things to us. It's not unthinkable that it could do beneficial things, like curing certain diseases. After all, it's 250,000,000 years old. It must be doing something right.

  • The conversation went like this... (Score:5)

    by glowingspleen ( 180814 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @11:42PM (#693919) Homepage
    Scientist #1: Hey Bill, I was thinking...we just aren't inventing enough stuff to wipe out humanity.

    Scientist #2: What do you mean, James?

    #1: Well, we have nanobots in the works and that Taco Bell genetically altered supercorn, but something is lacking...

    #2: Hey I have an idea. Let's take some really old bacteria and try to give it life again!

    #1: Wow, great idea! But do we know what it does to the ecosystem?

    #2: Nope! But we're scientists so we can't be blamed!

    #1: Perfect! Hey, how about after this we go over to that local supercollider and try to make a tiny black hole to play with?

    #2: But isn't that dangerous?

    #1: Of course it is, silly. But we're SCIENTISTS, remember?


    THE END...(of life on Earth)

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