Murray et al. 2012. Microbial life at −13 °C in the brine of an ice-sealed Antarctic lake. PNAS
Lake Vida is in the Antartic, how's this for a place to live:
- sits at -13 deg C
- salt concentrations 6 times that of sea water
- sits under 50-100 ft of ice
- aphotic (little or no light penetrates)
- anoxic (no oxygen)
(taken from Nature journal's website here)
As always though, microbes abound - albeit ~10-fold lower concentrations than lakes, and a lot more tiny cells that normal. Now that doesn't mean the diversity is high - in the survey they found ~32 species in 8 different phyla - but c'mon, give any microbes credit for living down there!
The researchers cored deep, viewed the cells via fluorescent staining and microscopy, and coupled that with rRNA gene sequence analysis.
Link to the original article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/11/21/1208607109
Link to more general article: http://www.nature.com/news/life-abounds-in-antarctic-lake-sealed-under-ice-1.11884
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