illuminating science

This is actually old news (and so, really, not “news”, but I digres), but Digg today featured a BBC documentary video from the year 2000 about the discovery of 250 million year old bacteria encased inside a salt crystal. These bacteria were cultured and found to still be alive and viable. The story is actually pretty cool - the scientist, Dr. Russell Vreeland from West Chester University, didn’t really expect to find anything - and indeed out of the 60 or so crystals they looked at, most contained no signs of life. Then, one day, one of the other researchers brought in a vial which clearly had something growing in it. What they’d found were bacteria that existed in “cryptobiotic” state for 250 million years - far older than the dinosaurs! - where they neither feed nor reproduce, instead existing as spores. When exposed to the appropriate conditions, however, they just pick up where they left off.

Interestingly, the bacteria don’t seem to be all that different from today’s, with a similar DNA structure and no fundamental changes, suggesting that although life has evolved, no dramatic changes have occurred. In the video, Dr. Vreeland mentions the obligatory Jurassic Park reference, where dinosaur DNA is obtained from mosquitos embedded in amber after sucking some dino blood (Mmm!). And although the bacteria are believed to be harmless, they still treated them as potential pathogens - just in case.

Because the work is relatively old (6 years) if there were any problems with lab contamination etc I would have expected it to surface by now, but I haven’t found anything. So, it looks like the bar for the oldest living organism on the planet is a lot different to what a little quiz book I’ve got says (either a tortoise or a tree, depending on semantics!)