8/03/2020

Headline, August 04 2020/ O'' NATURE : ''' '' PARTY-ON MICROBES PARLEYS '' '''


O'' NATURE : 

''' '' PARTY-ON MICROBES

 PARLEYS '' '''




SCIENTIST YUKI MORONO EXPECTED THAT after thousands, if not million, of years stuck in the mud, the microbes would be slow to rise.

But within just a few days, some of the groggy germs had started to divide. For nearly two years, the researchers watched their specimens grow ; 557 days later, many communities of the teeny troopers were still chugging along, game to ''sit up and party on''.

The microbes newfound vivacity hints that for million of years, they were ''just kind of waiting for conditions to improve,'' said Virginia Edgecomb, a geomicrobiologist of Woods Hole Institution

THE SOUTH PACIFIC GYRE is an aquatic nowhere. it's the spot in the sea that's farther from the  land than any other - so devoid of nutrients, life and even continental dust that it's considered ''the deadest spot in the ocean,'' said Steven D'Hondt, a geomicrobiologist at the University of Rhode Island.   

Yet 20,000 feet beneath the surface of this watery desert, microscopic creatures have not only found a way to eke out a living, they've also managed to weather the inhospitality for the tens of millions of years.

In a paper published last Tuesday in Nature Communications, Dr. D'Hondt and his colleagues describe the remarkable revival of a small population of microbes that may have spent 100 millions years or so slumbering in sediment below the gyre, only to be roused in the lab.

If the findings are confirmed, these microbes could be among the oldest living organisms ever found.

Spawned during a time when the non-avian dinosaurs still stalked the earth, these hibernating cells might have rested as the continents creaked into their modern configuration, the globe's first grasses emerged and our great ape lineage took its first steps toward walking upright.

Such longevity is unlikely, even mathematically impossible within the constraints of some models, said Yuki Morono, a microbiologist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, or Jamstec, and an author of the study : ''No theoretical microbiologist can explain it. But we found it.''

Other scientists have unearthed snoozing microbes from harsh environments beneath the seafloor in the past. Crushed by miles of water mud and starved of food, sunlight and warmth, cells must adapt or perish. Those that adapt can sometimes avoid death by simply teetering on the verge of it.

Scientists think that microbes will grind their metabolism to a near halt so they can make do with the  meager motes of food in their environment. Some in the field refer to this strategy as ''the slow lane of life,'' said Nagissa Mahmoudi, a geomicrobiologist at McGill University who wasn't involved in the study. ''They're not really thriving. They're just hanging on.''

But the relative rarity of such cells has made it tough to determine  just how long such states of quasi-suspended animation can actually last.

So a team led by Scientist Fumio Inagaki, also of Jamstec, set sail into the southern Pacific ocean in the fall of 2010 and drilled deep into its sediments.

Over eons, mud settles in layers like a chronological stack of pancakes, with the newest additions closest to the seafloor; the oldest, 250 feet under the ocean bottom, had been laid down about 101.5 million years before.

Even Dr. Morono was skeptical of finding life in the most ancient parts of the mucky, nutrient-poor cores the team extracted. Down there, bits of clay are crammed so tightly together that the spaces between them can't even accommodate the full width of a bacterial cell.

''You are packed into the sediment and cannot move,'' he said. ''I cannot even imaging such a harsh environment as a human.''

But as he continued to sample backward in time, it became clear that there were microbes all the way down.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Universe, Earth, Life and Creation, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Katherine J. Wu.

With respectful dedication to Mankind, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011:

''' Light & Lanes '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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