Ice age bacteria brought back to life

www.NewScientist.com ^ | 2/25/2005 | Kelly Young

[aimhigh]

A bacterium that sat dormant in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years has been revived by NASA scientists.

Once scientists thawed the ice, the previously undiscovered bacteria started swimming around on the microscope slide. The researchers say it is the first new species of microbe found alive in ancient ice. Now named Carnobacterium pleistocenium, it is thought to have lived in the Pleistocene epoch, a time when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth.

NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover, who led the team, said the find bolsters the case for finding life elsewhere in the universe, particularly given this week's news, broken by New Scientist, of frozen lakes just beneath the surface of equatorial Mars.

..Excerpt..

[aimhigh]

Ready for the next plague?

[nikos1121]

will the same science work to get hair growing again?

[nuffsenuff]

Please tell me they've destroyed it.

Please?

[BenLurkin]

They'll be sorrr-rryyy!

[tallhappy]

Why such initial negativity?

[RosieCotton]

My gosh...don't they know what could happen? Don't they watch X-Files???

[frogjerk]

Please tell me they've destroyed it.

Please?

I was thinking the same thing...

[job]

See Smilla's Sense of Snow.

[pabianice]

It's listed as having voted in Chicago as a Democrat last year...

[Finalapproach29er]

Incredible.

This could get very interesting.

[I Drive Too Fast]

Now named Carnobacterium pleistocenium, it is thought to have lived in the Pleistocene epoch, a time when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth.

Would bringing this bacteria back to life be considered a "Mammoth" undertaking.

Time to watch "The Andromeda Strain" again.

[BostonianRightist]

Ping

[MadIvan]

The natural processes of this world took it out of circulation for a reason. Sometimes scientists truly irritate me.

Regards, Ivan

[frogjerk]

Ice age bacteria brought back to life

You mean, the bacteria was DEAD and scientists reanimated the bacteria?

I think the article should have said "Ice age bacteria thawed"

[mysterio]

A scientist grew bacillus isolated from the salt crystals of an ancient sea bed. The bacillus sample was 250 million years old. That's the current record holder.

[Willie Green]

It's a miracle that it managed to survive.
Geeez, the Engangered Species Act wasn't passed until 1973.
How could it go for thousands of years without Government protection?

[Little Pig]

Revitalized or revived would probably be a better term.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[dahicks]

X-Files and countless other science fiction movies. This will turn out badly, I am sure.

Science fiction aside, they really shouldn't be tampering with things they don't understand. Some of these organisms frozen in the ice for millenia might really turn out to be a long-dormant plague or some other nasty little thing. It should stay where it is and not brought into a different world, in a different climate. Many things on our Earth have changed in those many years, and there is no way to tell how it would react to those changes.

[CobraJet]

Destroy it? It will be placed on the Endangered Species List and protected!

[DTogo]

If something bad happens, we all know who's in the White House and who the MSM will go after.

[sandbar]

Yeah, NOONE has immunity to this microbe.

Wouldn't it be funny if this is the microbe that cause massive extinction...oh wait. Maybe not.

[Doctor Stochastic]

A bacterium that sat dormant in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years has been revived by NASA scientists.

And upon seeing the movies nominated for Academy Awards this year, promptly went dormant again.

[Barney59]

THE BLOB!

[jim_trent]

What could go wrong? Sounds like the 1950's movie, "The Thing". Of course, it is probably classified as an endangered species, so we can't destroy it.

[tarator]

Perhaps now we will finally find out for sure what killed the dinosaurs.

[siunevada]

It's listed as having voted in Chicago as a Democrat last year...

CA Democrats commented that we aren't spending nearly enough federal funds to rehabilitate this most needy of all life forms.

[DoctorMichael]

Bugs are tough.

[Ignatius J Reilly]

I'd rather have them bring it to life in a controlled and contained lab and learn about it than have some speciman thaw on its own and get into circulation without warning.

[Bear_Slayer]

they really shouldn't be tampering with things they don't understand.

I can appreciate your caution however, there are many things we would not have today if somebody decided not to fool with "things they don't understand."

[hershey]

Just what I was thinking. Defrost these bugs and you never know what you get.

[rintense]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

[Graymatter]

Hey Barn. Better go tell Miss Krump about this.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Science has thawed out the bacteria that caused the extenction of the Wolly Mammouth! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

[Strategerist]

The % of bacteria that cause human disease out of all the bacteria species in the world is microscopic.

We're all constantly bathed in bacteria all the time.

[ManHunter]

I can see the headlines now: "Disney opens Pleistobacterium Park on Remote Arctic Island."

[NJ_gent]

"The bacillus sample was 250 million years old. That's the current record holder."

But.. but.... the Earth is only 5,000 years old! [/lunatic]

[yankeedame]

will the same science work to get hair growing again?

Only a billiard ball.

[blam]

"Another interesting article: "Prehistoric bacteria revived from buried salt" by J. Travis in Science News Volume 155, June 12, 1999, p. 373. In this article, J. Travis has interviewed such men as William D. Rosenzweig and Russell H. Vreeland of Penn. University who have now announced to have isolated and revived bacteria from salt deposits that is 250 million years old. Also in the paper, a researcher is mentioned, who is said to have been ahead of his time claimed, back in the 1960s, to have revived bacillus and other bacteria from salt deposits more than 500 million years old

.

[Barney59]

You mean the Miss Krump of Mayberry fame?

[MD_Willington_1976]

LOL...that's what I was thinking too...

Sometimes scientists are just "Book smart & life stupid..."

[jimfree]

Beware of the Blob!

[Question_Assumptions]

I really wish that scientists would stop with the whole, "We found life in [some extreme environment] so that means that life on other planets is more possible." Not unless you are a creationist. Just because life can live in an extreme environment does not mean that it could develop in that extreme environment. Yeah, life might be able to live in a very broad range of temperatures and pressures but the sort of initial development that scientists suggest for life first evolving is much more narrow and specialized.

[Graymatter]

Here's Miss Krump! BLOB alert!

[Chinito]

Hmmm...I thought this all sounded rather familiar.

[Starrgaizr]

[nikos1121]

that'lll work

[Lazamataz]

Why such initial negativity?

Because we are likely to have ZERO resistance to bacteria, funguses, and viruses from 32,000 years ago.

Like 'wipe out the entire Earth' vulnerability.

[Lazamataz]

Why such initial negativity?

Because we are likely to have ZERO resistance to bacteria, funguses, and viruses from 32,000 years ago.

Like 'wipe out the entire Earth' vulnerability.