WISSARD Team Finds First Signs of Microbial Life in an Antarctica Subglacial Lake

 

Scientists drilling in Lake Whillans, a remote body of water buried 2,600 feet below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, have discovered evidence of living bacteria. The finding follows the recent discovery that microorganisms live within clouds in the troposphere, suggesting that life is capable of thriving in an even broader range of extreme environments than scientists previously thought possible, broadening the list of potential extraterrestrial habitats, including Europa and Enceladus which are also thought to harbor oceans of liquid water. The half mile of glacial ice atop Lake Whillans is from snow that fell onto Antarctica thousands of years ago.  A sensor lowered down the borehole this week showed that dissolved minerals were far more abundant in the lake than previously thought.

“The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on,” says Andrew Mitchell, a microbial geochemist from Aberystwyth University in the UK who is working this month at Lake Whillans. 

 

The water samples were first removed from the ice sheet at 6:20am on Monday, January 28, by the U.S. research team Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, or WISSARD. Researchers employed a quick test to analyze their samples for potential life by injecting green DNA-sensitive dye into the water, and immediately found numerous glowing cells.

To vett their results the team will next place the lake water into dishes of nutrients and food to see if anything grows, which could take weeks or more. If and when it does, the resulting bacteria cultures may represent a new form of life, capable of surviving and reproducing without direct access to geothermal heat or sunlight.

The microbes residing in Lake Whillans most likely survive on rocks bordering the lake, and have plenty of oxygen to breathe despite their location 2,600 feet beneath the Earth’s frozen surface. When water melts off the base of the ice sheet, it releases minute but sufficient amounts of oxygen, allowing the microbes to grow.

“When you melt ice, you’re liberating the air bubbles [trapped in that ice],” Mark Skidmore, a geomicrobiologist at Montana State University and WISSARD team member told Discover Magazine. “That’s 20 percent oxygen,” he continued. “It’s being supplied to the bed of the glacier.” 

The Researchers hypothesize that the subterranean bacteria are engaged in a process called weathering, Weathering is responsible for naturally deconstructing billions of tons of minerals across our planet’s surface each year, in which microbes use oxygen to process iron and sulfur in the rocks around them. The sulfuric acid produced as a byproduct of this activity would likely dissolve other minerals in the lake, liberating sodium, calcium, potassium, and other materials which might provide nutrients to the bacteria.

“The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on,” Andrew Mitchell, a microbial geochemist from Aberystwyth University in the UK currently working at Lake Whillans, told Discover Magazine.

The U.S. team is joined by similar groups from Russia and Britain, all drilling into lakes trapped beneath glaciers. The Russian team is drilling into Lake Vostok and recently obtained their first samples of liquid water, which at first they thought to contain life, but soon realized simply held microbes left over from kerosene used to drill beneath the ice. The British team is tapping into Lake Ellsworth, but has been forced to abandon drilling efforts after numerous setbacks.

Source: The Daily Galaxy via Discover Magazine and http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/microbes-discovered-in-antarctic-lake-broaden-possibilities-for-extraterrestrial-life-video/