Newly Discovered Iron-breathing Microbes

Researchers have reported that a reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years. It's a bit like finding a forest that nobody has seen for 1.5 million years.

The discovery of life was in a place where cold, darkness, and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive.

Despite their profound isolation, the microbes are remarkably similar to species found in modern marine environments, suggesting that the organisms now under the glacier are the remnants of a larger population that once occupied an open fjord or sea.

Chemical analysis from the inaccessible subglacial pool suggests that its inhabitants have lived by breathing iron leached from bedrock with the help of a sulfur catalyst. Lacking any light to support photosynthesis, the microbes have presumably survived by feeding on the organic matter trapped with them when the massive Taylor Glacier sealed off their habitat an estimated 1.5 to 2 million years ago.

The samples were taken at Antarctica's Blood Falls, a frozen waterfall-like feature at the edge of the Taylor Glacier whose striking red appearance first drew early explorers' attention in 1911. Scientists have determined that the coloration is due to rust, which the new research shows was likely liberated from subglacial bedrock by microorganisms.

Original article here.