Microbes Alive After Being Frozen for 32,000 Years

An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting on a new type of bacteria that after being frozen 32,000 years in the Arctic was ready to swim, eat and multiply instantly upon being thawed. Researchers are excited because they're the sort of microbes that might thrive in the ice sea announced on Mars yesterday. The instant revival abilities mean a future mission, if it found anything on Mars, could conceivably culture it and bring it back alive. Maybe NASA could market them as Martian Sea Monkeys."

Re:Honest Question

[Mr. Capris]

Prolly by guessing the age of the ice it was found in...based on strata, isotope dating (if possible)

Re:Honest Question

[pronobozo]

Doesn't say in the article how they knew but I do know that in some instances, they track the layers in ice/snow from each years snow fall.

They can find out a lot of information because water and pollutants can travel all around the world and deposit in them.

I've also read about microbes being able to do the same thing.

As for this instance... well... google it.

How to date ice, and bring it home to your mother

[yuckysocks]

The basic way to date ice samples is pretty similar to "endochronology"
(which is looking at tree rings to determine their age). Ice cores [secretsoftheice.org]
have similar striations which can be counted to determine the age of the
surrounding ice.

And I couldn't find a link, but I thought at one point
scientists were looking at the air composition inside the ice and comparing
it to historical atmospheric ratios of gasses to date things.

Re:How to date ice, and bring it home to your moth

[abb3w]

The basic way to date ice samples is pretty similar to "endochronology" (which is looking at tree rings to determine their age).

That's dendrochronology. "Endochronology" has to do with study of some of the odder properties of thiotimoline [wikipedia.org].

Re:Yet Another Reason To Worry About Global Warmin

[rebelcool]

Actually the worst would be someone who died of an extremely virulent form of a virus and was subsequently frozen, then thawed later.

I recall reading about how in some scandinavian country they found a body of a man who died of the 1918 influenza pandemic (one of the worst flu strains ever, millions died) that was frozen in some tundra. They set up a quarantine area around him while he was recovered, lest the extremely contagious and deadly form of the flu in him get loose.

Panspermia and previously thawed 2800 yo bacteria

[Linuxathome]

Thawing out old bacteria [space.com] is not a new discovery--what's interesting here is that it is older bacteria.

The more interesting question about possible unicellular organisms in Mars is whether they share a common ancestor with Earth's unicellular organisms or did they develop independently of each other. If there is a link/common ancestor, then the currently weak theory of panspermia (life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores) [google.com] would have a big boost in support. Also see this article about possible space bugs [space.com] written over 2 years ago.

Re:What are these "new" bacteria related to?

[Stripsurge]

"Carnobacterium pleistocenium, has a 99.8% similarity to Carnobacterium alterfunditum
"
Not quite. 99.8% refers to the similarity between a specific gene common to both (all) bacteria. The gene in question codes for ribosomal RNA of the 16s subunit. It is required for protein synthesis. Due to its importance not too many mutations normally occur in it. Most mutations are lethal.

Overal their DNA was only 39 % the same. Unfortunately I don't have full access either :( although this early on I doubt they'd know too much other than what's stated in the paper.

Re:I spit on your 32K years. Try 25M!

[afidel]

Uh, check your facts budy. Here's a link [ku.edu] since you obviously can't use google.

Re:32000 years? Big deal!

[Illserve]

The article says nothing of the sort.

The cells are certainly not 16 million years old.

Re:I spit on your 32K years. Try 25M!

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that that case refers to *spores*, not to frozen bacteria. I don't think spores are considered alive in the same way a bacteria is. Think seed versus plant. Reviving the latter is a much bigger deal.