Extreme extremophiles: under ice with low oxygen (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 25, 2022, 21:52 (883 days ago) @ David Turell

Life can live anywhere:

https://www.sciencealert.com/life-has-been-found-in-a-low-oxygen-super-salty-sub-zero-a...

"Fed by waters that pass through 600 meters (1,970 ft) of permafrost, the sub-zero, salty, virtually oxygen-free Lost Hammer Spring in the Canadian Arctic is one of the harshest places on Earth. Even here, however, life finds a way.

'Scientists have found microbes thriving in the briny water that seeps up from deep below the permafrost –

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"From deep below the permafrost, water with less than one part per million of dissolved oxygen, around 24 percent salinity and at temperatures around minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) seeps up to the surface. Imagine trying to live in that. You couldn't, not without significant help.

"But microbes have been found living in some pretty crazy places. Given its similarity to the maybe-lakes on Mars, microbiologist Elisse Magnuson of McGill University in Canada and her colleagues wanted to see if Lost Hammer Spring might be one of them. Although it wasn't easy.

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"Most of the microbes they found were entirely new to science and had specific adaptations to allow them not just to live, but thrive, in a place like Lost Hammer Spring.

"'The microbes we found and described at Lost Hammer Spring are surprising, because, unlike other microorganisms, they don't depend on organic material or oxygen to live," said microbiologist Lyle Whyte of McGill University.

"'Instead, they survive by eating and breathing simple inorganic compounds such as methane, sulfides, sulfate, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, all of which are found on Mars. (my bold)

"'They can also fix carbon dioxide and nitrogen gasses from the atmosphere, all of which makes them highly adapted to both surviving and thriving in very extreme environments on Earth and beyond."

"This kind of metabolism is known as chemolithotrophic, and has only been found in microbial organisms, at least here on Earth, and usually in pretty extreme environments. So if there is life on Mars with a similar survival strategy, it's likely, according to what we know of both Earth and Mars, to be very small indeed."

Comment: life started during the nasty Hadean period on Earth. It had to be designed to be so tough.