Viable Microbes in Lake Vida but Not Lake Vostok So Far

Abstract

Microorganisms that were isolated from the rest of the world under ice more than 3,000 years ago continue to thrive at −13°C in the dark, salty, and anoxic liquid depths of Lake Vida in the Antarctic that is covered with about 65 feet of ice, according to Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., and her collaborators. “We found 32 different—what I would define as operational taxonomic units by ribosomal gene sequence—spread across eight phyla,” she says. Details appear in the December 11, 2012 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (doi:10.1073/pnas.1208607109).