Common microbes survive pressures equal to those found at 50 kilometers inside the Ea...( d temperature effects on microbial comm...)

d temperature effects on microbial communities. According to Scott, One of the fundamental questions that needs to be asked now is whether the response exhibited by the bacteria is due to adaptation or selection. Our results raise important questions about the impact of pressure on the evolution of life and the study has tremendous impact on understanding a number of processes that are due to phase shifts caused by environmental conditions, such as the use of methane hydrates by microorganisms. Scott continues, This is what happens when two scientists with very diverse backgrounds get together and test the validity of past assumptions. Sharma is an experimental geochemist and Scott is a microbiologist. Both are also members of the Carnegie Lead Team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), which provided support for this work. The NAI was designed by NASA to encourage and stimulate such interdisciplinary collaborations.

The study suggests that as far as pressure goes, the subduction zones on Earth and deep water/ice structures, such as those found on the moons Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, might be environments that could harbor life. "Understanding how microbes survive deep subsurface environments expands our ability to define and examine potential habitable niches beyond Earth," commented NAI Associate Director, Dr. Rose Grymes. The techniques being developed at the Geophysical Laboratory will be used to test various hypotheses on the viability and probability of life in different environments, even before any NASA missions for the search for life are planned. For some time there has been mounting evidence that a large portion, if not a majority, of life today exists in the deep subsurface (including in deep frozen lakes and the ice caps on Earth). This along with other recent findings should be taken into account when focusing on the survivability of life elsewhere. Soon the only thing that should limit our investigation of the survivability of life o
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Contact: Anurag Sharma or James Scott
202-478-8957
Carnegie Institution
21-Feb-2002

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