Researchers Awaken Ancient Lifeforms Exposed By Thawing Ice Caps and Permafrost (sfgate.com) 66
"Researchers in a warming Arctic are discovering organisms, frozen and presumed dead for millennia, that can bear life anew," reports the Washington Post:
These ice age zombies range from simple bacteria to multicellular animals, and their endurance is prompting scientists to revise their understanding of what it means to survive... Mosses have forged a tougher path. They desiccate when temperatures plummet, sidestepping the potential hazard of ice forming in their tissues. And if parts of the plant do sustain damage, certain cells can divide and differentiate into all the various tissue types that comprise a complete moss, similar to stem cells in human embryos... Thanks to these adaptations, mosses are more likely than other plants to survive long-term freezing, said Peter Convey, an ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey. On the heels of evolutionary biologist Catherine La Farge's Canadian moss revival, Convey's team announced it had awakened a 1,500-year-old moss buried more than three feet underground in the Antarctic permafrost...
While the elderly mosses discovered by La Farge and Convey are remarkable, the clique of ice age survivors extends well beyond this one group of plants... A microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, Tatiana Vishnivetskaya drills deep into the Siberian permafrost to map the web of single-celled organisms that flourished ice ages ago. She has coaxed million-year-old bacteria back to life on a petri dish. They look "very similar to bacteria you can find in cold environments (today)," she said. But last year, Vishnivetskaya's team announced an "accidental finding" -- one with a brain and nervous system -- that shattered scientists' understanding of extreme endurance.
As usual, the researchers were seeking singled-celled organisms, the only life-forms thought to be viable after millennia locked in the permafrost. They placed the frozen material on petri dishes in their room-temperature lab and noticed something strange. Hulking among the puny bacteria and amoebae were long, segmented worms complete with a head at one end and anus at the other -- nematodes... She estimated one nematode to be 41,000 years old -- by far the oldest living animal ever discovered. This very worm dwelled in the soil beneath Neanderthals' feet and had lived to meet modern-day humans in Vishnivetskaya's high-tech laboratory.
The article also quotes Gaetan Borgonie, a nematode researcher at Extreme Life Isyensya in Gentbrugge, Belgium, "who believes these feats of survival may portend life on other planets."
He calls the newly-discovered endurance of nematodes "very good news for the solar system."
While the elderly mosses discovered by La Farge and Convey are remarkable, the clique of ice age survivors extends well beyond this one group of plants... A microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, Tatiana Vishnivetskaya drills deep into the Siberian permafrost to map the web of single-celled organisms that flourished ice ages ago. She has coaxed million-year-old bacteria back to life on a petri dish. They look "very similar to bacteria you can find in cold environments (today)," she said. But last year, Vishnivetskaya's team announced an "accidental finding" -- one with a brain and nervous system -- that shattered scientists' understanding of extreme endurance.
As usual, the researchers were seeking singled-celled organisms, the only life-forms thought to be viable after millennia locked in the permafrost. They placed the frozen material on petri dishes in their room-temperature lab and noticed something strange. Hulking among the puny bacteria and amoebae were long, segmented worms complete with a head at one end and anus at the other -- nematodes... She estimated one nematode to be 41,000 years old -- by far the oldest living animal ever discovered. This very worm dwelled in the soil beneath Neanderthals' feet and had lived to meet modern-day humans in Vishnivetskaya's high-tech laboratory.
The article also quotes Gaetan Borgonie, a nematode researcher at Extreme Life Isyensya in Gentbrugge, Belgium, "who believes these feats of survival may portend life on other planets."
He calls the newly-discovered endurance of nematodes "very good news for the solar system."
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The Universe has made many attempts on wiping out Life on this rock, with no success.
But it has successfully wiped out literally countless species.
Re:I hope there's life on other planets. (Score:5, Funny)
Global warming is bringing extinct species back to live, and turning frozen wastelands into arable land. God damn, global warming is awesome! Thank you to all the people who dug up and burned all those fossil fuels and made these wonderful developments possible. You are heros, and don't let any of these liberal morons tell you different.
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turning frozen wastelands into dark swamps
FTFY.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The story misses a "we're all gonna die" flag.
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Re: Problem (Score:1)
The thing...
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Scientists should be required to watch more sci-fi before reviving critters.
Tennessee Tatiana Vishnivetskaya (Score:2)
I'd like to buy a vowel.
That sounds like a movie name.
Nematodes have a brain (Score:2)
For sufficiently loose definitions of “brain”, anyway.
Also, lots of plants pump water out of their cells as a defense against freezing temperatures - mosses are not unique in that regard.
Oh, great... (Score:5, Funny)
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If only it could fight back that well, they wouldn't dig it up so it can die now after putting in all those long hours waiting.
Stranger than fiction (Score:2)
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Exactly, but I suspect most readers aren't familiar with it. I give it two thumbs up though.
Any worry about thawing some ancient virus? (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably more of a scifi plot perhaps, or maybe something out of a horror novel like the "Captain Tripps" virus from 'The Stand'. It does make me wonder sometimes, even worry a bit that possibly locked away frozen in time is some doomsday virus that could have wiped out all humans off a particular continent or whatnot and scientists are digging and thawing shit out, maybe without knowing exactly what they got at first.
Just like the story of the nematode discovery in the article that only after the stuff was placed in a petri dish they were expecting single cell organisms and suddenly see nematodes. I can picture the same discovery except what if instead of nematodes it was some apocalyptic virus, the researchers go home infecting everyone in their path and suddenly we've got an AMC weekly TV series situation on our hands.
lol
Or maybe I'm the only nerd that immediately thought that. Hehe
Re:Any worry about thawing some ancient virus? (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh...the "shit" is thawing out with or without the scientists. What? You didn't get the memo? A good part of Alaska is basking under the warm glow of 90 degree temperatures. As a hint, this hasn't happened in aeons.
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Except when part of it hit 100 degrees back in 1915. But yeah, aeons, sure.
Re: Any worry about thawing some ancient virus? (Score:1)
Try this story. Instead of a virus happily floating in the upper atmosphere, permafrost release is just as plausible, terrestrial or extra, doesn't matter:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Any worry about thawing some ancient virus? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're not the only one who's thought of it. Europeans completely wiped out the native people of Patagonia (the Tehuelche) because they had no previous exposure to the diseases the colonists brought with them. That's just one of many examples.
Global warming is going to expose us to diseases that humans haven't seen for 100,000 years or more, and at a time when we're already struggling with superbugs. The results should be interesting.
Re:Any worry about thawing some ancient virus? (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, the Tehuelche could have wiped out Europeans by having an endemic disease just as easily.
We don't need to worry about 100,000 year old superbugs. They have likely never been exposed to penicillin.
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Also possible that one of the bugs will yawn and then have MRSA for breakfast.
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OK, that is definitely scary as hell. A Frankenstein monster of ebola/small pox, the idea that you just disintegrate and liquify over course of a few days is horrific
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What is important about ancient microorganisms are two things: they are different and they do not exist anymore. Which makes them pretty much random modifications of existing organisms.
Random, because none of the selection is applied to them and if we bring them back to life, the chances of them having any effect on us are slim.
Microorganisms are not some random variations of DNA sequence that are always stable and lethal. Randomness in DNA or protein sequence does not work this way. You need to have, like
John Carpenter says that's his Thing (Score:2)
But we know he just remade it.
nuff said (Score:2)
We beat it before (Score:2)
We beat it before, why can't we beat it again?
Cthulhu is coming!!! (Score:2)
"While the elderly mosses discovered by La Farge and Convey are remarkable..."
It's name is Shavalyoth.
"She has coaxed million-year-old bacteria back to life on a petri dish..."
Hastur, aka "The Feaster from Afar".
"But last year, Vishnivetskaya's team announced an "accidental finding" -- one with a brain and nervous system -- that shattered scientists' understanding of extreme endurance."
Cthulhu, and "extreme endurance" doesn't cover it. Cthulhu cannot be killed, only imprisoned.
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