Scientists Successfully “Wake” Microbes That Had Remained Dormant for 100 Million Years

A team of scientists in the US and Japan says that these prehistoric microorganisms began to grow and divide despite having entered an energy-saving state when dinosaurs were still walking on Earth.

The microbes belonged to ten different bacteria groups and were recovered from sediments mined in 2010 at the bottom of the South Pacific Gyre, one of the most deserted parts of the ocean in terms of nutrients.

“Our results suggest that microbial communities widely distributed in organic-poor abyssal sediment consist mainly of aerobes that retain their metabolic potential under extremely low-energy conditions for up to 101.5 million years,” write researchers in their study.

To obtain samples of the maximum possible depth, they drilled wells of up to 100 meters in the seabed at 5,700 meters below the surface.

The researchers, led by geomicrobiologist Yuki Morono of the Japan Marine Science and Technology Agency, incubated the sleeping microbes for 557 days in a laboratory. Read the free article.