"Hi,I was wondering why there is a theory of nurses and doctors doing an autopsy on some alien bodies from the Roswell crash."
-
Icelandic subglacial lakes
Project Investigators: Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson
Other Project Members
Eric Gaidos (No Role Selected)Brian Glazer (No Role Selected)Summary
This project is describing the microbial community inhabiting the water column of a subglacial volcanic lake in Iceland. These systems are potential analogs for habitats on ice-covered worlds such as the outer planet satellites, and Mars.
Astrobiology Roadmap Objectives:
- Objective 2.1: Mars exploration
- Objective 4.1: Earth's early biosphere
- Objective 5.3: Biochemical adaptation to extreme environments
- Objective 6.2: Adaptation and evolution of life beyond Earth
Project Progress
The hot-water drilling apparatus and sampling mechanism used during the 2006 expedition to the western Skaftárkatlar subglacial lake has been described in a paper submitted to the Icelandic glaciological journal Jökull and a paper that appeared in the Journal of Glaciology. Data on the temperature profile and geochemistry of the lake water column has been analyzed and interpreted in a paper in review in Geophysical Research Letters. The paper has passed through one round of minor revisions and we expect acceptance for publication. We are also making progress in analyzing our single water sample using molecular biological techniques. We have completed cell counts based on DNA-staining of intact cells. We have also categorized the cells as bacteria or archaea using a suite of general oligonucleotide-fluorophore probes in the technique of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), showing that the lake?s microbial community consists almost entirely of bacteria with few or no archaea. We have also carried out partial sequencing of two clone libraries constructed from a fragment of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplified using PCR: These libraries suggest an extremely low diversity community consisting of phylotypes related (by sequence) to cultivated psychrotolerant organisms capable of acetogenesis, sulfur reduction, and ferric iron reduction. This indicates a lake ecosystem based on using hydrogen to reduce CO2, sulfur, and ferric iron to produce energy and is consistent with our geochemical data indicating high amounts of CO2, sulfide, and detectable but unknown concentration of H2. Further sequencing of these libraries has been completed, as well as 454 pyrosequencing of the V6 hypervariable region of the ribosome, and we used highly-specific FISH probes to enumerate some of the species heavily represented as phylotypes in our clone libraries. This research results to date have been described in talks given at the fall meeting of the AGU in San Francisco, the Volcano-Ice Interactions Workshop 2 in Vancouver, Canada,the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution meeting in Halifax, Canada, and a seminar at Cal Berkeley; a manuscript describing the biology results is also in preparation.
An Iceland team jointly supported by Science Foundation of Iceland and NASA Astrobiology funds successfully sampled the eastern Skaftÿrkatlar lake in June of 2007. Two boreholes were drilled for sampling and a total of 8 one-liter water samples were obtained from different depths; this represents a 20-fold increase in total sample volume over the previous expedition. Like the western lake, the eastern lake is covered by nearly 300 m of ice and is about 100 m deep; the samples are also anoxic/sulfidic. Cell counts are approximately equal to that in the western lake. Detailed analysis of these samples is now getting underway in Iceland.
- HANDBOOK OF STAR FORMING REGIONS
- A Rare low mass quadruple spectroscopic AND eclipsing binary
- A search for Main Belt Comets in Pan-STARRS 1
- A search for primordial water from deep in the Earth's mantle
- A spectroscopically unique Main Belt asteroid: 10537 (1991 RY16)
- A Supertree Analysis of the Metazoan Phylogeny
- Acquisition and Installation of a new Cameca ims 1280 ion microprobe
- Acquisition and Installation of Witec Confocal Raman microscope scanning system
- Amorphization of Crystalline Water Ice in the Solar System
- Assessing the likelihood of supernova impact of protoplanetary disks
- Carbonate Lithologies on Devon Island, Canada
- Chemistry and biology of ultramafic-hosted alkaline springs
- Chemistry of the NH3/H2O system
- DIVERSITY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY OF THE UNIQUE TROPICAL PHYLUM PLACOZOA
- Dynamical Evolution of Astroid Belt and the Parent Bodies of Iron Meteorites
- Ecology of a Hawaiian lava cave microbial mat
- FMARS Long Duration Mission: a simulation of manned Mars exploration in an analogue environment, Devon Island, Canada
- Formation and Detection of Hot-Earth Objects in Systems with Close-in Jupiters
- Formation and the Prospects of the Detection of Habitable Planets in Extreme Planetary Systems
- Formation of Molecular Hydrogen via Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Hydrocarbon Ices in the Interstellar Medium
- Formation of Planetesimals in a Dynamically Evolving Nebula
- FU ORIONIS ERUPTIONS
- Ice Ages on Mars
- Ice at the Mars Phoenix Landing Site
- Ice on Main Belt Comets
- Icelandic subglacial lakes
- Mechanisms of Marine Microbial Community Structuring
- Mechanistical Studies on the Non-Equilibrium Chemistry of Unusual Carbon Oxide in Solar System Ices
- Modeling grain surface reaction pathways for large organic molecules
- Molecular Deuteration on grain surfaces
- NEWBORN BINARIES
- Observations and Models of comet 17P/Holmes
- Origin and Activation Mechanism of Main Belt Comets
- Origin of Irregular Satellites
- Recovery of comet 85P/Boethin for the Deep Impact Extended Mission
- Sediment-buried basement deep biosphere
- Serpentinazation and abiogenic methane in the Mariana Forearc
- Sleeping through the Arctic Martian Sol
- Spectropolarimetric studies of stars with hot jupiters
- TES study of intracrater low albedo deposits, Amazonis Planitia, Mars
- The delivery of short-lived radionucleides to the solar system
- The effect of lunar-like satellites on the orbital infrared lightcurves of Earth-analog planets
- The Main Belt distribution of basaltic asteroids
- The Size Distribution of Small KBOs
- THE VYSOS PROJECT
- Ultra-violet processing of ices in the Rosette Nebula
- Unveiling the evolution and interplay of ice and gas in quiescent clouds
- Variable Young Stellar Objects Survey (VYSOS)
- Water on Mars
- X-ray- and UV-bright low-mass stars in the solar neighborhood