X-treme Microbes — Text-only | Flash Special Report
Amazing Survivors


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Photo 1
The driest parts of Chile's Atacama high desert get rain once every few decades, and are blasted with high levels of ultraviolet radiation. These and other circumstances make the Atacama an excellent terrestrial model for conditions on Mars. Yet, extreme microbial life exists a few inches below the surface. In this image, researcher Jay Quade samples the soil for key compounds.
Credit: Julio L. Betancourt, U.S. Geological Survey

Photo 2
Antarctica is another site in which researchers study extreme life-forms adapted to survive fiercely hostile environments. Investigators with NSF’s Long-Term Ecological Research program have identified a number of novel species, including microbes (shown in scanning electron microscope inset) in lake ice from the ultra-cold Dry Valleys in East Antarctica. Credit: Peter West, National Science Foundation; courtesy of the Priscu Research Group, Montana State University at Bozeman (inset)

Photo 3
Antarctica’s Dry Valleys contain a number of lakes that are ice-covered year-round. Although they harbor some liquid water, their conditions are drastically different from those in temperate lakes. There is almost no circulation and the water is cut off from air and light. To see what kind of microbes might survive this environment, investigators from Montana State University lowered a sediment trap.
Credit: Courtesy of the Priscu Research Group, Montana State University at Bozeman

Photo 4
Researchers have removed ice cores from an ice-capped body of water called Lake Vida in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys. The cores contained microbes nearly 3,000 years old, with DNA that has been extremely well preserved. Once thought to be frozen down to its bottom, Lake Vida has been shown to have a small amount of liquid water that is seven times saltier than the sea, enabling it to remain liquid at -10 C.
Credit: Courtesy of the Priscu Research Group, Montana State University at Bozeman

Photo 5
In the middle of East Antarctica, buried two miles beneath the surface of the massive ice sheet, is an underground freshwater lake the size of Lake Ontario. Called Lake Vostok, it may contain organisms that have been completely isolated for 500,000 years. This image, taken from ice cores obtained above the lake, reveals numerous microorganisms.
Credit: Courtesy of the Priscu Research Group, Montana State University at Bozeman

Photo 6
The Arctic region holds its share of extreme life-forms. In this image from an expedition near Greenland, researchers remove the filter head from a pump. The device was designed to pump hundreds of liters of seawater from a given depth across a set of filters with pore sizes small enough to collect aggregates of material and associated microbes (shown in inset).
Credit: Melanie Simard; Shelly Carpenter (inset)

Photo 7
In the 1970s, researchers discovered that seafloor vents—cracks in the Earth’s crust that release superheated water and thick clouds of minerals—are home to a host of extremophile organisms. This photo shows a typical formation. The inset photo is a scanning electron microscope image of organisms (both bacteria and archaea) inhabiting the interior of the vent chimney.
Credit: University of Washington, Center for Environmental Visualization; Matthew Schrenk, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington (inset)

Photo 8
Researchers monitor organisms in the Colorado Rockies at one of several sites in the Alpine Microbial Observatory program.  Participants study the seasonal dynamics of soil microorganisms across a wide range of elevations and geography, from mountain forests at around 9000 feet to tundra and rocky cliffs at 12,000 feet.
Credit: Ken Wilson, EBIO Department, University of Colorado

Photo 9
For more than 40 years, Yellowstone National Park, with its remarkable range of microenvironments, has proven to be an unflagging source for extremophile organisms. This photo shows one such environment, a geothermal spring called Black Sand Basin, named for the small granules of obsidian distributed throughout the area.
Credit: Gwendolyn E. Morgan

Photo 10
A scientist collects samples from Obsidian Pool, a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park that has provided investigators with a broad spectrum of extremophile diversity over the years. The genetic differences among various microbes in this environment is a subject of intense study.
Credit: Jeff Walker

Photo 11
This sandstone-like sample from the Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park has a surprise occupant: A number of microbes (the greenish layer) that have learned to survive in the pores of rock acidic enough to dissolve nails and heated by surrounding water to about 95 F. Inset luminescence image shows microbes as pink and rock as blue.
Credit: John R. Spear; Jeff Walker (inset)

Photo 12
Another category of extreme microbes, called “halophiles,” is adapted to high-salt conditions of the sort found in ponds of the Guerrero Negro area of Baja California, shown here. A research team from the University of Colorado, using genetic identification techniques, found a variety of novel microorganisms that thrive in this locale. The inset photo shows a piece of gypsum from the brine ponds. Each color indicates the presence of a different kind of microorganism.
Credit: John R. Spear (both)

Photo 13
Researchers take samples from the bubbling mud around a collapsed volcano in Russia’s remote Kamchatka peninsula. The site features a remarkable diversity of extremophile activity, and is studied by scientists from around the world.
Credit: Noah Whitman, ©Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

Photo 14
Kamchatka microbial samples, sealed in blue-topped test tubes, incubate in a hot spring among hairy-looking filamentous bacteria.
Credit: Noah Whitman, ©Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

Photo 15
Researchers take samples from the Henderson Mine in Empire, Colorado. Among the many questions to be answered in such deep underground locations is: Are particular kinds of deep-dwelling extremophiles associated with different kinds of mineral composition in the surrounding rock?
Credit: John R. Spear

Photo 16
Extremophile organisms living in acid drainage from a mine near Redding, California, were found to have a novel genetic makeup. Scientists crept underground near the source of the run-off and took samples of a biofilm (a sheet of microbes) growing there. The subsequent genetic analysis produced the diagram in the inset.
Credit: Gene Tyson, University of California, Berkeley; Gene Tyson and Jill Banfield, University of California, Berkeley (inset)