The ability of life to find its way into the most extreme environments on Earth, in which we would never imagine that they could allow the proliferation of organisms, continues to provide one piece of evidence after another, giving us reason to believe that extraterrestrial life, even if it is In its most primitive form, it can occur on other planets, or in remote places in our Solar System.
A team of scientists has discovered that microbes in Antarctica have a never before known ability to take up hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from the air to stay alive in the most extreme conditions.
A finding that suggests that extraterrestrial microbes could also depend on tracking atmospheric gases to survive.
“Antarctica is one of the most extreme environments on Earth. However, cold, dark and dry desert regions are home to a surprisingly rich diversity of microbial communities,” says the study’s lead author and associate scientist at the University. from New South Wales from Sydney, Professor Belinda Ferrari.
The big question has been how microbes can survive when there is little water , soils have very little organic carbon, and there is very little ability to produce energy from the sun through photosynthesis during the darkness of winter.
“We found that microbes have evolved mechanisms for living off the air and that they can get most of the energy and carbon they need to remove atmospheric gases , including hydrogen and carbon monoxide,” he says.
To carry out the study, soil samples were taken from two ice-free coastal sites in different regions of East Antarctica. One of them was Robinson Ridge, 10 kilometers from Casey Station, in Wilkes Land. The other was Adams Flat, 242 kilometers from Davis Station in Princes Elizabeth Land. Both areas are pristine polar deserts devoid of vascular plants.
The researchers studied the microbial DNA in the surface soil of both locations and reconstructed the genomes of 23 of the microbes that lived there, including some of the earliest genomes of two previously unknown groups of bacteria called WPS-2 and AD3.
They found that dominant soil species had genes that gave them a high affinity for hydrogen and carbon monoxide, allowing them to remove trace gases from the air at a rate high enough to maintain their anticipated energy needs and support primary production.
A possible sustenance for extraterrestrial life
This new understanding of how life can still exist in physically extreme and nutrient-deficient environments like Antarctica opens up the possibility that atmospheric gases support life on other planets.
Most organisms use energy from the sun or the earth to grow. More research is needed to see if this novel use of atmospheric gases as an alternative energy source is only widespread in Antarctica, or also in other places, even outside our planet.
For example, on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
The study has been prepared by researchers from UNSW, Monash University, the Australian Center for Ecogenomics at the University of Queensland, GNS Science in New Zealand and the Antarctic Division of Australia, has been published in the journal Nature.
Photograph: Adams Flat, one of two places in Antarctica where microbes were collected / Phil O’Brien.
