Friday, April 17th, 2009

A Community of Ancient Bacteria

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Iron oxides stain the snout of the Taylor Glacier, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, forming a feature commonly referred to as Blood Falls. The iron originates from ancient subglacial brine that episodically discharges to the surface. Image courtesy of Benjamin Urmston.

We'll talk with researcher studying a community of bacteria that has been isolated from the surface for millions of years. The bacteria live in subglacial pools beneath Antarctica's Blood Falls on the Taylor Glacier, an iron-rich, anoxic, and extremely saline environment.Writing this week in the journal Science, researchers describe some of the biochemical processes that have allowed the bacteria to survive below the glacier ice, and use the bacteria to look back millions of years to life on a much different planet Earth.

Guests

Jill A. Mikucki
Research Associate, Department of Earth Sciences
Visiting Fellow, The Dickey Center for International Understanding, Institute of Arctic Studies
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire

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Segment produced by:Annette Heist

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Image: Iron oxides stain the snout of the Taylor Glacier, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, forming a feature commonly referred to as Blood Falls. The iron originates from ancient subglacial brine that episodically discharges to the surface.
Image courtesy of Ralph Maestas.

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