Deep sea microbes dormant for 100 million years are hungry and ready to multiply

Date:
July 28, 2020
Source:
University of Rhode Island
Summary:
Researchers reveal that given the right food in the right laboratory
conditions, microbes collected from subseafloor sediment as old
as 100 million years can revive and multiply, even after laying
dormant since large dinosaurs prowled the planet.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
For decades, scientists have gathered ancient sediment samples from below
the seafloor to better understand past climates, plate tectonics and the
deep marine ecosystem. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers reveal that given the right food in the right laboratory conditions, microbes collected from sediment as old as 100 million years
can revive and multiply, even after laying dormant since large dinosaurs prowled the planet.


==========================================================================
The research team behind the new study, from the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the URI Graduate School
of Oceanography, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science
and Technology, the Kochi University and Marine Works Japan, gathered
the ancient sediment samples ten years ago during an expedition to the
South Pacific Gyre, the part of the ocean with the lowest productivity
and fewest nutrients available to fuel the marine food web.

"Our main question was whether life could exist in such a nutrient-limited environment or if this was a lifeless zone," said the paper's lead author
Yuki Morono, senior scientist at JAMSTEC. "And we wanted to know how
long the microbes could sustain their life in a near-absence of food."
On the seafloor, there are layers of sediment consisting of marine snow (organic debris continually sourced from the sea surface), dust, and
particles carried by the wind and ocean currents. Small life forms such
as microbes become trapped in this sediment.

Aboard the research drillship JOIDES Resolution, the team drilled
numerous sediment cores 100 meters below the seafloor and nearly 6,000
meters below the ocean's surface. The scientists found that oxygen was
present in all of the cores, suggesting that if sediment accumulates
slowly on the seafloor at a rate of no more than a meter or two every
million years, oxygen will penetrate all the way from the seafloor to the basement. Such conditions make it possible for aerobic microorganisms
-- those that require oxygen to live -- to survive for geological time
scales of millions of years.

With fine-tuned laboratory procedures, the scientists, led by Morono,
incubated the samples to coax their microbes to grow. The results
demonstrated that rather than being fossilized remains of life, the
microbes in the sediment had survived, and were capable of growing
and dividing.

"We knew that there was life in deep sediment near the continents where
there's a lot of buried organic matter," said URI Graduate School of Oceanography professor and co-author of the study Steven D'Hondt. "But
what we found was that life extends in the deep ocean from the seafloor
all the way to the underlying rocky basement." Morono was initially
taken aback by the results. "At first I was skeptical, but we found that
up to 99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years
ago were still alive and were ready to eat," he said.

With the newly developed ability to grow, manipulate and characterize
ancient microorganisms, the research team is looking forward to applying a similar approach to other questions about the geological past. According
to Morono, life for microbes in the subseafloor is very slow compared to
life above it, and so the evolutionary speed of these microbes will be
slower. "We want to understand how or if these ancient microbes evolved,"
he said. "This study shows that the subseafloor is an excellent location
to explore the limits of life on Earth." Before looking ahead to future research, D'Hondt took time to reflect on Morono's achievement. "What's
most exciting about this study is that it shows that there are no limits
to life in the old sediment of the world's ocean," said D'Hondt. "In
the oldest sediment we've drilled, with the least amount of food, there
are still living organisms, and they can wake up, grow and multiply."
This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science (JSPS), the Funding Program for Next Generation World-Leading Researchers, and the U.S. National Science Foundation. This study was
conducted using core samples collected during Expedition 329, "South
Pacific Gyre Subseafloor Life," of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Rhode_Island. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Morono, Y., Ito, M., Hoshino, T. et al. Aerobic microbial life
persists
in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years. Nat Commun,
2020 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17330-1 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200728113533.htm

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