Can the Martian Arctic Support Extreme Life?

ABC.com features NASA’s Phoenix lander and the search for life on Mars in a new article on their Technology and Science website. Harkening back to Viking, and citing new discoveries of microbes in Greenland’s glaciers, the article focuses on the need to understand the microbiology of Earth’s extreme environments in order to best search for life on other planets.

June 25, 2008 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice

Low Abundance Acidophilic Archea Revealed

Scientists from NAI’s University of California, Berkeley Team report in this week’s Science on their use of shotgun sequencing to uncover three novel archea present in all biofilms growing in pH 0.5 to 1.5 solutions within the Richmond Mine, California. Their results inform the problem of characterizing microbial communities and lineages which are difficult to cultivate.

December 20, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Earth’s Hidden Biospheres

Two recent discoveries in astrobiology challenge many of our assumptions about an integrated biological community on Earth. At the microbial level, it seems that there may be previously hidden biospheres that exist on Earth alongside our more familiar neighbors. One such community has been found deeply buried underground, while the other lives in the sea alongside more familiar life forms.

Read More

November 5, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Microbes of the Deep

In this week’s Science, researchers from NAI’s Indiana, Princeton, Tennessee Astrobiology Initiative (IPTAI) and Carnegie Institution of Washington Teams report that they have found an extant microbial biome at 2.8km depth in a South African mine. Analyses showed thermophilic sulfate reducers existing “with no apparent reliance on photosynthetically derived substrates.”

October 19, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Photosynthesis in the late Archean

A new study on carbon isotopes in sedimentary rocks from Western Australia by researchers from NAI’s Penn State and Carnegie Institution of Washington Teams supports the idea that small, shallow pools of water containing photosynthetic microbes existed on the early Earth ~ 2.72 Gya, about 300 million years before the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere. Their findings suggest a “global-scale expansion” of these habitats, and a progression away from anaerobic ecosystems and toward photosynthetic communities before the oxygenation...

Read More

October 16, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Microbial Diversity in the Deep Sea

NAI PI of the Marine Biological Laboratory Team, Mitch Sogin, and his team have published a new paper in PNAS documenting astonishing new findings of microbial diversity in the deep sea. The findings are the result of a new DNA technique called “454 tag sequencing.”

Image courtesy of Micro*scope

July 31, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Going Deep

Some of the most arresting images of life on our planet have come from the deep-sea world of hydrothermal vents. Massive chimneys belching superheated fluids, colonies of giant crimson-tipped tubeworms swaying in the current, swarms of tiny shrimp, albino crabs. These ecosystems, although isolated from life on the surface, contain a virtual zoo of creatures, thriving under conditions of heat and pressure so extreme that, until the vent communities were discovered in the late 1970s, scientists did not even imagine...

Read More

March 30, 2006 / Posted by: Yael Kovo

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ancients: Microbial Mats and Biosignatures

Understanding microbial communities can give clues to how life shaped the Earth billions of years ago – and help find signs of life on distant planets.

Read More

May 11, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe