Vast, Zombie-like Microbial Life
Lurks Beneath Seabed
TAMPA
—
Scientists have drilled a mile and a half (2.5
kilometers) beneath the seabed and found vast underground forests of "deep
life," including microbes that persist for thousands, maybe millions of
years, researchers said Monday.
Feeding on nothing but the energy from rocks, and
existing in a slow-motion, even zombie-like state, previously unknown forms of
life are abundant beneath the Earth despite extreme temperatures and pressure.
About 70 percent of Earth's bacteria and archaea —
single-celled organisms with no nucleus — live underground, according to the
latest findings of an international collaboration involving hundreds of
experts, known as the Deep Carbon Observatory, were released at the American
Geophysical Union meeting in Washington.
This "deep life" amounts to between 15 and
23 billion tons of carbon, said the DCO, launched in 2009, as it nears the end
of its 10-year mission to reveal Earth's inner secrets.
"The deep biosphere of Earth is massive,"
said Rick Colwell, who teaches astrobiology and oceanography at Oregon State
University.
He described the team's findings so far as a
"very exciting, extreme ecosystem."
Among them may be Earth's hottest living creature,
Geogemma barossii, a single-celled organism found in hydrothermal vents on the
seafloor.
Its microscopic cells grow and replicate at 250
degrees Fahrenheit (121 Celsius).
"There is genetic diversity of life below the
surface that is at least equal to but perhaps exceeds that which is at the
surface and we don't know much about it," Colwell said.
'Distinct' from surface life
Similar types of strange, deep life microbes might be
found on the subsurface of other planets, like Mars.
"Most of deep life is very distinct from life on
the surface," said Fumio Inagaki, of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth
Science and Technology.
Using the Japanese scientific vessel Chikyu,
researchers have drilled far beneath the seabed and removed cores that have
given scientists a detailed look at deep life.
"The microbes are just sitting there and live for
very, very long periods of time," he told AFP.
Brought up from these ancient coal beds and fed
glucose in the lab, researchers have seen some microbes, bacteria and fungi
slowly waking up.
"That was amazing," said Inagaki.
Scientists have found life in continental mines and
boreholes more than three miles (five kilometers) deep, and have not yet
identified the boundary where life no longer exists, he added.
How basic biology works?
Gaining a better understanding of subsurface life on
Earth can also help understand and better engineer climate-change fighting
technologies that may one day sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
"What we learn here will help us understand what
to look for on other planets or other systems where life could exist,"
said Colwell.
In any case, studying what some scientists have called
the "Galapagos of the Deep," dramatically changes human's perception
of life on Earth, and their place in it.
Most of our planet's microbial life is deep beneath
the surface, and it may have played a big part in the evolution of Earth's
atmosphere by locking carbon dioxide underground and allowing air for people and
animals to breathe.
"There is lots and lots of life on Earth that we
did not know about. The fact that so much of it — at least in the marine
sediment — is functioning at extremely low energy, it really changes our basic
conception of how biology works," said Karen Lloyd, an associate professor
at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
"They are new branches on the tree of life that
have been on Earth, doing whatever it is that they do, for billions of years,
but without us ever noticing them," she told AFP.
"It is like looking beside you and finding that
you have an office mate you never knew about."
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