8 mil yr old bacterium thawed and revived

[AcesandEights]

Kurt Russell unavailable for comment...

Source (http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12433&feedId=online-news_rss20)


Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing
12:12 07 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic

An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.

If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.

Kay Bidle of Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, and his colleagues extracted DNA and bacteria from ice found between 3 and 5 metres beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica. The ice gets older as it flows down the valleys and the researchers took five samples that were between 100,000 and 8 million years old.

They then attempted to resuscitate the organisms in the oldest and the youngest samples. "We tried to grow them in media, and the young stuff grew really fast. We could plate them and isolate colonies," says Bidle. The cultures grown from organisms found in the 100,000-year-old ice doubled in size every 7 days on average.

Sluggish growth
Whereas the young ice contained a variety of microorganisms, the researchers found only one type of bacterium in the 8-million-year-old sample. It also grew in the laboratory but much more slowly, doubling only every 70 days.

By examining the average length of DNA fragments found in all the ice samples, the researchers determined that frozen DNA is progressively degraded as time passes. Its half life is 1.1 million years – that is, after 1.1 million years half the original DNA has been degraded.

The researchers believe the DNA is degraded by cosmic rays, which are particularly strong at the poles where the Earth's magnetic field is at its weakest.

Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University, who led the study, describes the ancient bacteria as small round cells that had been in a "suspended state of animation for 8 million years". He says the increasingly rapid flow of glaciers into the ocean as a result of global warming could release new organisms into the sea but he does not believe this is cause for concern because marine bacteria and viruses are typically far less harmful to human health than, for instance, those found on land.

Gene bank
Russell Vreeland of the Ancient Biomaterials Institute at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, US, agrees. "This has been happening probably for a long, long time. Ice freezes and melts, rocks sink and are eroded. Microbes have been involved with this process for almost 4 billion years," says Vreeland, who has resuscitated 250-million year-old bacteria found in salt crystals. "Earth acts as a gene bank for microbes."

Similarly, Falkowski and his colleagues describe the glaciers as "gene popsicles" containing DNA that can be acquired by existing organisms when it is thawed.

Vreeland says Falkowski has made a "fascinating discovery". But he says there is a chance the ancient bacteria are in fact very young. Ice, says Vreeland, is a very difficult material to work on without contaminating it. Falkowski's team treated their samples with 95 per cent ethanol and bleach, which Vreeland says are not effective sterilisers.

"I don't see anything wrong with an organism surviving this long but I wouldn’t use these techniques," he says.

If true, however, Falkowski's findings could considerably extend the record for the oldest DNA frozen in ice. Last month, a team of researchers led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark announced that they had recovered DNA from the Greenland ice sheet that was up to 800,000 years old (see Oldest frozen DNA reveals a greener Greenland).

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702196104)

[tkane18]

"If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life..."

Well it looks like I'll be boarding up my windows this weekend and stocking up on guns and supplies.

Once these little critters get out and find the first dead body.......you know what's going to happen!

[Cykotic]

Can people not leave this kind of s**t alone?

First, foot and mouth decides to make it's presence shown again, now this.

FFS, can anyone else see this "Virus foreplay" ending badly??

[MikePizzoff]

Hopefully this scientific facility has a lock-down procedere for when the incubators or vials holding these organisms break...

[EvilNed]

Not all bacteria are bad. But even so, I'm wondering if these guys actually know what exactly the bacteria they've revived does?

[AcesandEights]

can anyone else see this "Virus foreplay" ending badly??

Yes, Cykotic. I'm afraid this will end as all foreplay invariably does: messily. Let's just hope humanity isn't the sucker laying in the wetspot when it's all said and done.

[Danny]

*tugs collar nervously*

well im pretty paranoid anyway but this is almost as bad as hearing about robots with a.i and having flashbacks to scenes from judgement day:lol:

*sighs*, still no frozen dinosuars yet.:bored:

[Cody]

its freaky in a way. like roachs living with out heads for so long

[Yojimbo]

Dummies!
Dummies!!!!!
Dummies!!!!!!!

[Terran]

Well it wont matter if they resuscitate the organisms or not.....because if they dont nature will thaw them out naturally as the ice melts.....we would have to refreeze all the ice caps to prevent them from being released in nature....

Nothing to be afraid of I guess....

[Neil]

Wonders what ever happened to that super virus that killed off the dinosaurs before being frozen...

[Terran]

Are you referring to the K-T extinction?.....

THE K-T EXTINCTION
About 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous, a large fraction of plant and animal families suddenly went extinct. In this Cretaceous-Tertiary or K-T mass extinction (K is for Kreide, meaning chalk in German, which describes the chalky sediment layer from that time; T is for Tertiary, the next geologic period), all land animals over about 55 pounds went extinct, as did many smaller organisms.

The K-T mass extinction obliterated the dinosaurs , pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ammonites, some families of birds and marsupial mammals, over half the plankton groups, many families of teleost (bony) fishes, bivalves, snails, sponges, sea urchins and others.

This catastrophe eventually led to the Age of Mammals.


because I thought they were pretty sure that the largest factor of that extinction event was from the after effects asteroid impact....





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THE ALVAREZ ASTEROID IMPACT THEORY
There are a lot of theories about why this K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) extinction occurred, but a widely accepted theory (proposed in 1980 by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter Alvarez, a geologist), is that an asteroid 4-9 miles (6-15 km) in diameter hit the Earth about 65 million years ago. The impact would have penetrated the Earth's crust, scattering dust and debris into the atmosphere, and causing huge fires (generated by hot debris thrown from the crater), tsunamis, severe storms with high windsand highly acidic rain , seismic activity, and perhaps even volcanic activity . The impact could have caused chemical changes in the Earth's atmosphere, increasing concentrations of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and fluoride compounds. The heat from the impact's blast wave would have incinerated all the life forms in its path.

The dust and debris thrust into the atmosphere would have blocked most of the sunlight for months, and lowered the temperature globally.

Those organisms that could not adapt to the temperature and light changes would die out. Since plants' energy is derived from the sun, they would likely be the first to be affected by changes in climate. Many families of phytoplankton and plants would die out, and the Earth's oxygen levels may well have dramatically decreased, both on land and in the oceans, suffocating those organisms which were unable to cope with the lower oxygen levels.

Major changes in the food chain would result from all of these these environmental upheavals. The herbivores (plant eaters) who ate those plants would starve soon after the plants died. Then, at the top of the food chain, the carnivores (meat eaters), having lost their prey, would have to eat each other, and eventually die out. Their large carcasses must have provided smaller animals with food for quite a while.



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LOCATION OF THE IMPACT CRATER
There are many impact craters on Earth. A 120-mile-wide (180 km), 1-mile-deep (1600 m) impact crater, Chicxulub, is found at the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Gulf of Mexico. This crater dates back to 65 million years ago, and is probably the site of the K-T meteorite impact. Evidence of K-T period tsunamis all around the Gulf of Mexico has been found.

The Shiva crater is a another huge impact crater located under the Arabian Sea off the coast of India near Bombay. This crater also dates from the K-T boundary, 65 million years ago, when the Chicxulub crater at the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula also formed. Although it has shifted because of sea floor spreading, when pieced together it would be about 370 miles (600 km) by 280 miles (450 km) across and 7.5 miles (12 km) deep (and may be just part of a larger crater). It is estimated to have been made by a bolide (an asteroid or meteoroid) 25 miles (40 km) in diameter. This crater was named by the paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee for Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and renewal.



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CHEMICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY
In the clay layer from the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, scientists have found chemical evidence that supports the Alvarez impact theory. The K-T layer consists of the sedimentary deposits that accrued from the end of the Cretaceous period to the beginning of the Tertiary period. It is divided into two layers, the Magic Layer (3 mm thick) and the Ejecta Layer (2 cm thick).


Siderophiles - The Rare Earth Elements Os, Au, Pt, Ni, Co, Pd, and Ir, are Siderophile Elements. Their abundance in the lower K-T layer is indicative of an asteroid impact. Iridium (Ir) has been found in the K-T layer around the world. The discovery of a 100,000-years-thick layer of iridium in the K-T boundary in New Zealand, Denmark, and Italy. Iridium is rare on Earth except near the Earth's center, but relatively abundant in chondritic meteors (stony meteors with chondrules, spherical blobs of silicates which pre-date planetary formation). A meteoritic origin of this iridium layer seems likely. This layer became known as the iridium anomaly.
Tektites - Tektites are quartz grains which are vaporized under intense heat and pressure, and cool into glass beads with no crystalline structure. Tektites were probably formed during a meteorite or comet collision. Tektites are abundant in the K-T layer.
Shocked quartz - When quartz is put under extremely high pressure, it can cleave in parallel planes. Shocked quartz is found at nuclear bomb sites and known meteorite impact areas. Shocked quartz is abundant in the K-T layer.
Stishovite (Silicon Dioxide) - a form of quartz created under conditions of high heat and pressure. It is used as an indicator of meteor impact. It has been found in abnormally high abundance in the K-T layer. Most likely formed during a massive collision.
Glass beads - Kenneth Miller has discovered a two-inch layer of glass beads in the K-T layer near the Bass River in New Jersey, USA, supporting Alvarez' theory.



I havent heard of a super virus....these are the other theories that Ive heard of....


OTHER THEORIES ABOUT THE K-T EXTINCTION


While an asteroid impact may be cause of the K-T extinction, there are other theories about the cause of that mass extinction. Some of these other theories include:

Extreme volcanic activity and the accompanying acid raincould have changed the Earth's climate enough to trigger a mass extinction. The late Cretaceous was a time of high tectonic activity and accompanying volcanic activity . The supercontinent Pangaea was splitting up and the continents were taking on their modern-day forms. Extreme volcanic activity would spew dust and acidic chemicals (like sulphuric acid) into the atmosphere, causing global cooling, and perhaps, mass extinctions.

Changes in the Earth's orbit that could have caused climactic cooling might have caused the extinction. In this scenario, the dinosaurs couldn't adapt to the cold, but the furry mammals could. This is consistent with the climate in the late Cretaceous; toward the end of the Cretaceous, there was a drop in sea level, causing land exposure on all continents, more seasonality, and greater extremes between equatorial and polar temperatures.

Mammals eating dinosaurs' eggs has been suggested as a cause of the K-T extinction. This doesn't explain why so many other species went extinct, or why there are chemical anomalies in the K-T layer.

Large amounts of methane changing the Earth's atmosphere (causing a greenhouse effect). The methane source would be from deep-sea algae deposits and/or from plant-eating dinosaurs digestion by-products.
The herbivorous dinosaurs' over-foraging and the carnivorous dinosaurs' over-culling of the herbivorous dinosaurs could have triggered mass starvation.

A nearby supernova (an exploding star) could have bathed the Earth in deadly radiation.

Global Warming "killed" the dinosaurs http://www.asm.org/microbe/index.asp?bid=47684

[Danny]

why is killed in quote marks at the last one?:lol:

[Terran]

Because All dinosaurs did not get "killed" just most of them....some survived....

“There is almost no further doubt among vertebrate paleontologists that birds are descended from dinosaurs,” he says. “If that is the case, then dinosaurs did not die out at the end of the Cretaceous after all. . . . Dinosaurs [as birds] are all around you!”

[Danny]

im just sayin' its now often someone says "killed" in dr evil quotes:lol:

[Terran]

Heheh...well they didnt use the quotes from where I got that passage from...I added the quotes to that part because it just made more sense I felt.......:)

[Maitreya]

I wouldn't be worried about a supervirus causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, I'd be more worried about it being the cause of the extinction BEFORE that, I can't recall the name of it, but the one where 90% of life on earth died off in a relatively short period of time.

Now that's some scary ****.

[Danny]

^ Que a bizzaare explanation from scientologists and creationists about dragons and aliens then.

[Neil]

^ Que a bizzaare explanation from scientologists and creationists about dragons and aliens then.

Personally, I think those mass extinctions were all caused by alien dragons!

[Terran]

I wouldn't be worried about a supervirus causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, I'd be more worried about it being the cause of the extinction BEFORE that, I can't recall the name of it, but the one where 90% of life on earth died off in a relatively short period of time.

Now that's some scary ****.

I believe your thinking of the Permian extinction.... yeah that mustve been brutal! 96% of all marine life 70% of all terrestrial life...jeeze!


The Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) extinction event, sometimes informally called the Great Dying, was an extinction event that occurred 251.4 million years ago (mya),[1] forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods. It was the Earth's most severe extinction event, with up to 96 percent of all marine species[2] and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct.

Since it was so long ago there a still several potential scenarios for its cause....


Many theories have been presented for the cause of the extinction, including plate tectonics, an impact event, a supernova, extreme volcanism, the release of frozen methane hydrate from the ocean beds to cause a greenhouse effect, or some combination of factors.

I am unsure if any of these ideas for what caused the Permian extinction have gained favor over the others....If anyone knows of any contemporary findings or news or ideas about this extinction Id love to hear about it....


On a side note....I was thinking about what kind of animals existed terrestrially during the Permian because you hardly ever see or hear anything about them on TV or in magizines or in popular culture...(because its so hard to get remains from that far back....)....but I found this picture!....NEAT!!!......

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0009/images/feature4_4.jpg

The toothy skull of a gorgonopsian, the fiercest predator on land a quarter of a billion years ago, was found in an arid South African scrubland called Karoo.


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0009/images/feature4_3.jpg

Two huddling Diictodon died in their underground burrow in South Africa near the end of the Permian period. A few million years later about 90 percent of all the planet’s species became extinct.


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0009/images/feature4_1.jpg

Paleontologist Roger Smith of the South African Museum cleans tracks of Diictodon, one of many synapsids, or mammal-like reptiles, lost in the Permian extinction. A Diictodon model stands nearby.
Neat Recreation

[Danny]

^ cool sausagesaur.:)

as for alien dragons, screw scientology abnd creationism it was either finfangfoom or galactus!

[acealive1]

Can people not leave this kind of s**t alone?

First, foot and mouth decides to make it's presence shown again, now this.

FFS, can anyone else see this "Virus foreplay" ending badly??


INDEED!! havent they watched any xfiles or the thing?

[MissJacksonCA]

Thats the beginning of nothing good man... I feel like I just woke up in a horror movie after hearing something and going 'hello? who's there?' ... WHY KNOCK ON WOOD GUYS WHYYYYYYY :confused:

[Maitreya]

I believe your thinking of the Permian extinction.... yeah that mustve been brutal! 96% of all marine life 70% of all terrestrial life...jeeze!



Yea, that's it! Thinking about THAT gives me the shivers.




as for alien dragons, screw scientology abnd creationism it was either finfangfoom or galactus!

No no no my English friend, the only true explanation for it is this, and this alone

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g313/0mirror1mirror0/flyingspaghettimonster.jpg

[Danny]

oh of course, the noodly one is blatantly the one true religion, it states taht less pirates= more global warming.

seen any pirates lately?, adn notice how no species when extinct during the theatre run of pirates 3?:lol:

Embrace his noodly appendage.

That or go all emo sperioth-ey adn become a "jenovas witness":lol: