A team of scientists from Japan and America worked to see if microscopic life would survive in less hospitable conditions under the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. They were surprised by the result.
A study describing how scientists revived tiny microbes trapped dormant in a seemingly dead zone on the seafloor for over 100 million years, was published in Nature Communications .
“We wanted to know how long microbes can survive in conditions that are nearly non-viable and without food access,” explains microbiologist Yuki Morono of the Japan Marine and Earth Science and Technology Agency, which led the study.
For this purpose, microbes trapped in seabed sediments dating back 100 million years were examined. And after properly nourishing them and adding a small amount of oxygen, scientists managed to revive them. This is a really impressive discovery because the pressure on the organisms at the bottom of the ocean is enormous.
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Lack of oxygen, little access to nutrients or other energy sources are just some of the elements that organisms had to face. When life becomes trapped in other environments, Fr. high pressure (e.g. on the seabed), organisms quickly turn into fossils. The fact that the microbes have come back to life is therefore all the more surprising.
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