Did you know that the oldest organism on Earth is believed to be a microorganism found in 3-million-year-old permafrost in Siberia? There, it was living at a cosy average temperature of -10 °C at 14 m depth. Or did you hear that some other Arctic soil microorganisms can happily live at extreme temperatures down to -40 °C? Scientists often use these “extreme” microorganisms to get an idea on how ex ...[Read More]
It’s getting hot in here: Ancient microbes in thawing permafrost
Figure 1: You wondered what can live in frozen, ancient soil? Here you can see intact (A) and thawing permafrost (B). While Bacilli (red) and spore formers (green) can survive in the frozen and thawed permafrost, other species, such as Actinobacteria (blue) do not like it too much when it thaws. Carbon gets digested into carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), of which most is released into the atmosphere. Little is known about fungi (light brown) but they do exist. [Credit: Maria Scheel, created with biorender.com]