DNA of ancient microorganisms, long frozen in glaciers, may return to life as the glaciers melt, according to a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Boston University.
The finding is significant, said Kay Bidle, assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers, because scientists didn’t know until now whether such ancient, frozen organisms and their DNA could be revived at all or for how long cells are viable after they’ve been frozen. Bidle is lead author of the article, “Fossil Genes and Microbes in the Oldest Ice on Earth.”
Bidle and his co-authors, Rutgers colleague Paul Falkowski, SangHoon Lee of Korea’s Polar Research Institute and David Marchant of Boston University – melted five samples of ice ranging in age from 100,000 to 8 million years old to find the microorganisms trapped inside.
