Bacteria: The Space Colonists What'sNEW

Conrad

I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole goddamn Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said shit about it. — Pete Conrad (1)

On April 20, 1967, the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 3 landed near Oceanus Procellarum on the surface of the moon. One of the things aboard was a television camera. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan L. Bean recovered the camera. When NASA scientists examined it back on Earth they were surprised to find specimens of Streptococcus mitis that were still alive. Because of the precautions the astronauts had taken, NASA could be sure that the germs were inside the camera when it was retrieved, so they must have been there before the Surveyor 3 was launched. These bacteria had survived for 31 months in the vacuum of the moon's atmosphere. Perhaps NASA shouldn't have been surprised, because there are other bacteria that thrive under near-vacuum pressure on the earth today. Anyway, we now know that the vacuum of space is not a fatal problem for bacteria.

What about the low temperature and the possible lack of liquid water in space? The bacteria that survived on the moon suffered huge monthly temperature swings and the complete lack of water. Freezing and drying, in the presence of the right protectants, are actually two ways normal bacteria can enter a state of suspended animation. And interestingly, if the right protectants aren't supplied originally, the bacteria that die first supply them for the benefit of the surviving ones! English microbiologist John Postgate discusses this fact in The Outer Reaches of Life (2):

"When a population of bacteria dries out without a protectant, many of the cells break open and release their internal contents. Among these contents are proteins, gums and sugars, all of which are protective. If the population is sufficiently dense, so that significant amounts of protectant are released, material released from the majority which died first can protect a few of their surviving fellows.

"Comparable considerations apply to death from freezing.... Protective substances such as glycerol are well known and widely used; they are called cryoprotectants. Bacteria frozen without such chemicals leak internal contents, among which are many substances that are cryoprotective."

Postgate says that bacteria have apparently survived for 4,800 years in the brickwork of Peruvian pyramids, and maybe even 300 million years in coal, using the drying strategy. He also describes bacteria that apparently survived for 11,000 years in the gut of a well-preserved mastodon, although in this case the colony may have continued to live and multiply using nutrients available in the carcass. Postgate gives several other examples of long-surviving bacteria, and he is careful to mention the possibility that some of the bacterial cultures may have been contaminated, so not all of the reports are necessarily reliable.

Some bacteria have another even more effective survival strategy: they form spores. Spores are bacterial cells in complete dormancy, with thick protective coats. In terms of our computer analogy, a bacterial spore is like a handheld calculator that has repackaged itself into its original protective shipping carton and turned itself off.

"The resistance of some bacterial cells to environmental destruction is impressive. Some bacteria form resistant cells called endospores. The original cell replicates its chromosome, and one copy becomes surrounded by a durable wall. The outer cell disintegrates, but the endospore it contains survives all sorts of trauma, including lack of nutrients and water, extreme heat or cold, and most poisons. Unfortunately, boiling water is not hot enough to kill most endospores in a reasonable length of time.... Endospores may remain dormant for centuries" (3).

Postgate concludes his chapter on spores, entitled "Immortality and the Big Sleep," by saying, "There may be much older spores out there, waiting for energetic microbiologists to revive them."

Ancient bee in amber

Thirty Million-Year Sleep: Germ Is Declared Alive!

Revived bacteria

Postgate, upon learning of this discovery, wrote an article for The Times of London that concluded as follows (6):

"... could life on this planet be descended from alien spores? ...Panspermia, the view that the seed of life is diffused throughout the universe, has been favored by a minority of thinkers since the Greek Anaxagoras in the 5th century BC. He, Arrhenius and Fred Hoyle may yet have the laugh on us doubters."

When the first bacteria colonized the earth, almost four billion years ago, it was by our standards a hostile place. There was no free oxygen to breathe and no ozone to block out the sun's damaging ultraviolet radiation. Nuclear radiation came from decaying U235, which was about fifty times more abundant then than now (7). The air was hot and full of noxious chemicals such as sulphurous gases released by volcanoes. Not for nothing is it called the Hadean Eon. However, there are bacteria which can live, even thrive, in a very wide variety of conditions that seem unfriendly to us (8).

"Life manages very well without oxygen, evolving into flourishing communities of anaerobes. Acidity... presents no problem, as sulphur bacteria and their co-habitants illustrate, nor does a considerable degree of alkalinity bother alkophiles.... Water purity is a trivial matter: saturated salt brines support abundant bacterial life. And pressure is quite irrelevant, with bacteria growing happily in a near vacuum or at the huge hydrostatic pressure of deep ocean trenches. Temperature, too, presents little problem: boiling hot springs support bacterial life, and bacteria have been found growing at 112 C in superheated geothermal water under hydrostatic pressure; conversely, other types of bacteria thrive at well below zero, provided the water is salty enough not to freeze. And even if they do get frozen, many bacteria revive when their habitat thaws. Even organic food is not a prerequisite...."

There are bacteria that metabolize iron, nitrogen, sulphur, and other inorganic materials. There are bacteria today that can live without sunlight. Archaebacteria that can withstand extreme heat have been found thriving in oil reservoirs a mile underground (9). Some species of cyanobacteria are highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation. The only thing absolutely essential for bacteria to live, grow, and multiply is liquid water. We are confident that the early Earth had plenty of water. Scientists believe that concentration of water in the earliest atmosphere for which they have data, over four billion years ago, was far higher than it is today.

Bacteria have the ability to colonize an unfriendly planet like the Hadean Earth. Not just had the ability but have the ability. These are not make believe stories. All of the bacteria we have considered, with all of their unusual abilities to survive extreme environments, are alive today!

What'sNEW

Gautam Dantas et al., "Bacteria Subsisting on Antibiotics" [abstract], doi:10.1126/science.1155157, p 100-103 v 320, Science, 4 Apr 2008.
Jennifer E. Mendell et al., "Extreme polyploidy in a large bacterium" [abstract], doi:10.1073/pnas.0707522105, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, online 29 Apr 2008.
Brent C. Christner et al., "Ubiquity of Biological Ice Nucleators in Snowfall" [text], p 1214 v 319, Science, 29 Feb 2008.
LSU scientist finds evidence of 'rain-making' bacteria, EurekAlert!, 28 Feb 2008.
27 Feb 2008: The hypothesis that life in rock could have been transferred between planets... is plausible — Sherry L. Cady
Olivia Judson, "When Life Goes Cloudy" [html], The New York Times, 19 Feb 2008. "...The cloudy residents are bacteria of various kinds."
Ewen Callaway, "Bacteria's New Bones" [html], p 124-126 v 451, Nature, 10 Jan 2008. "Bacteria are now revealing a multitude of elegant internal structures."
26 Dec 2007: Do thawing glaciers speed up evolution?
12 Dec 2007: Shuttle experiment to study effects of space on bacterial spores.
Julie A. Huber et al., "Microbial Population Structures in the Deep Marine Biosphere" [abstract], 10.1126/science.1146689, p 97-100 v 318, Science, 5 Oct 2007. "Our results suggest that even the largest of published metagenomic investigations inadequately represent the full extent of microbial diversity...."
Nicolas Walter, ed., Investigating Life in Extreme Environments [60-page PDF], report issued following European workshops held Nov 2005 and Mar 2006.
Zero Gravity and Radiation Produce Powerful Microbes is the subject of a reply from Ken Jopp, 7 Oct 2007.
Makarova KS, Omelchenko MV, Gaidamakova EK, Matrosova VY, Vasilenko A, et al., "Deinococcus geothermalis: The Pool of Extreme Radiation Resistance Genes Shrinks" [html], doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000955, e955, PLoS ONE, Sep 2007.
The world's oldest bacteria, EurekAlert!, 27 Aug 2007. "Our project is about eg. examining how bacteria can live after having been frozen down for millions of years."
23 May 2007: ...Ionizing radiation significantly enhances the growth of fungi that contain melanin.
10 May 2007: E.O. Wilson thinks panspermia is likely.
7 May 2007: ...Durability could enable haloarchaea to survive the period of deep-space travel between planets, perhaps encased in salt crystals.... — Shiladitya DasSarma
Michael J. McInerney et al., "The genome of Syntrophus aciditrophicus: Life at the thermodynamic limit of microbial growth" [abstract], 10.1073/pnas.0610456104, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, online 18 Apr 2007.
4 Apr 2007: How did life on Earth originate?
Conan the Bacterium, by Krista Zala, ScienceNOW Daily News, 20 Mar 2007. "...Metal can increase the ability of the enzymes to fix broken chromosomes..."
Heidi Ledford, "Microbes reveal extent of biodiversity" [text], 10.1038/446240a, Nature, online 13 Mar 2007. "...The rate of discovery stayed more or less the same as the number of new sequences grew, suggesting that the number of new protein families will continue to increase."
22 Jan 2007: ...The bacteria and newfound Archaea ...could exist on other planets, such as in the iron- and sulfur-rich soil of Mars. — Jill Banfield
8 Jan 2007: The findings by the Viking experiments are reinterpreted.
21 Dec 2006: We humans are embedded in a microbial world that we barely acknowledge.
Study Finds the Air Rich with Bacteria, by Dan Krotz, Berkeley Lab, 18 Dec 2006.
Alexander R. Schmidt, "A microworld in Triassic amber" [abstract], 10.1038/444835a, p 835 v 444, Nature, 14 Dec 2006. "...220-million-year-old droplets of amber containing bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoans that are assignable to extant genera."
Extreme Life, Marine Style, Highlights 2006 Ocean Census, TerraDaily.com, 13 Dec 2006. "...An astonishing community of marine life shrouded beneath 700 meters of ice - 200 km from open water...."
Professional Fasters Deep Under the Sea Floor, Max Planck Society, 5 Dec 2006. "...an alternative source of energy for life deep under large sections of the Pacific - natural radioactivity.... An exotic habitat like this could also have developed on other planets, far away from any suns."
Extreme seabed-survival boosts hope of aliens, by Rob Edwards, NewScientist.com, 28 Aug 2006. "Japanese and German researchers have found billions of bacteria and other tiny organisms living in a layer of sediment which traps the CO2 under the seabed. Their survival in such a hostile natural environment suggests that something similar could be happening on other planets."
21 Oct 2006: Bacteria deep underground subsist on radioactivity.
28 Sep 2006: Because Deinococcus can survive death....
26 Sep 2006: What [rhodopsin] is doing in so many bacteria is not known....
23 Aug 2006: ...They hold a reserve of genetic information that could help them survive, or even become dominant, if environmental conditions change. — from the Marine Biological Laboratory
William Martin and Eugene V. Koonin, "A positive definition of prokaryotes" [text], p 868 v 442, Nature, 24 Aug 2006.
Effect of Spaceflight on Microbial Gene Expression and Virulence, NASA, 23 Aug 2006.
The Last Time It Rained, by Henry Bortman, Astrobiology Magazine, 23 Jun 2006. "...Where rainfall ...occurs once a decade, microbial life can eke out an existence."
Richard A. Kerr, "Life Slow Enough to Live on Radioactivity" [summary], p 179 v 312, Science, 14 Apr 2006.
Ecosystem in Suspended Animation?, Astrobiology Magazine, 28 Feb 2006. "Deeply buried ocean sediments may house populations of tiny organisms that have extremely low maintenance energy needs and population turnover rates of anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years...."
More than a Grain of Salt?..., Newswise.com, 17 Feb 2006. "...They might have a better idea of what to look for on Mars."
30 Jan 2006: More survivors of the Columbia disintegration have been found by biologists at Texas State University.
Clues on Extraterrestrials? Check Your Stomach, by Robert C. Cowen, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Jan 2006.
5 Dec 2005: Microbes can hunker down....
9 Nov 2005: Lichens survive in space aboard ESA's Foton M-2 mission.
E. Domack et al., "A chemotrophic ecosystem found beneath Antarctic ice shelf" [pdf], p 269-272 v 86, Eos, 19 Jul 2005. Press release: Antarctic Ecosystem Discovered, by Vige Barrie, Hamilton College, 18 Jul 2005.
21 July 2005: Rocco Mancinelli studies Earth's extremophiles.
Glennda Chiu, "Researchers discover arsenic-based ecosystem" [abstract], The Kansas City Star, 1 Jul 2005.
Bacteria able to carry out photosynthesis in ocean depths, by Skip Derra, Arizona State University, 20 Jun 2005.
Expect Life to be Cold, by Mitch Sogin, Astrobiology Magazine, 18 May 2005.
Traces Of Stowaway Earth Algae Could Survive On Mars, University Of Florida, 17 May 2005.
Microbes, Microbes Everywhere, by Mitch Sogin, Astrobiology Magazine, 16 May 2005.
Cindy L. Satterfield et al., "New evidence for 250 Ma age of halotolerant bacterium from a Permian salt crystal" [abstract], p 265-268 v 33 n 4, Geology, Apr 2005: "These results support the 250 Ma age of the fluid inclusions, and by inference, the long-term survivability of microorganisms such as Virgibacillus sp."
24 Feb 2005: Bacteria frozen for 30,000 years revived as soon as they thawed, according to Richard Hoover....
Axel Schippers et al., "Prokaryotic cells of the deep sub-seafloor biosphere identified as living bacteria" [text], p 861-864 v 433, Nature, 24 Feb 2005. Commentary at: Bacteria thrive at stunning depths, by Roxanne Khamsi, news@nature.com, 23 Feb 2005; and Ancient life thrives in the deep, BBCNews, 23 Feb 2005.
Microbes survive deep permafrost, by Becky McCall, BBCNews, 23 Feb 2005.
Wild Things: The Most Extreme Creatures, by Bjorn Carey, LiveScience, 7 Feb 2005.
Organisms Found in Deepest Part of Ocean, by Randolph E. Schmid, AP, posted by TimesLeader.com, 4 Feb 2005.
1 Jan 2005: Gene exchange among archaebacteria from salt pools in Spain.
14 Dec 2004: Microbes survived a short trip in space.
22 Nov 2004: Apollo 12 landed on the moon 35 years ago.
22 Oct 2004: Fungi from deep sea sediments revive.
14 Sep 2004: Halobacteria can repair badly damaged DNA.
Mini-Microbes Redefine Extreme Living, by Robert Roy Britt, Space.com, 26 May 2004.
D. rad Bacteria: Candidate Astronauts, Astronomy Picture of the Day, 25 Apr 2004.
19 Apr 2004: Mars may have life today (The New York Times).
Experiment onboard ISS to find out how bugs behave in orbit, by Tony Phillips, Science@NASA, 23 Feb 2004.
Philip Ball, "Astrobiology: Water, water, everywhere?" [text], p 19-20 v 427, Nature, 1 Jan 2004: "There seems to be no simple molecule that can mimic all of the useful biological functions of water."
Bacteria Discovered in 4,000 Feet of Rock Fuels Mars Comparison, by Mark Floyd, Oregon State University, 29 Dec 2003.
The Goldilocks Zone: bigger than we thought, by Ron Koczor and Tony Phillips, Science@NASA, 2 Oct 2003.
2003, September 15: Galileo will crash into Jupiter [to avoid contaminating Europa].
Kazem Kashefi and Derek R. Lovley, "Extending the Upper Temperature Limit for Life," p 934 v 301, Science, 15 Aug 2003: "Cultures incubated for up to 2 hours at 130°C still grew when transferred to fresh medium at 103°C."
Jonathan Knight, "Discovery changes view of bacteria," p 909 v 423, Nature, 26 June 2003: "Bacteria have specialized compartments that were previously thought to exist only in higher organisms."
Hitchhikers May Have Thumbed A Ride to Mars, by Leslie Mullen, Astrobiology Magazine, 9 Apr 2003; based on "Potassium Ferrate [Fe(VI)] does not mediate self-sterilization of a surrogate Martian soil" [abstract], by Ronald L. Crawford et al., in BMC Microbiology, 6 March 2003.
15-foot hypodermic needles provide evidence for vast oceanic crustal biosphere, EurekAlert!, 18 Mar 2003.
New life discovered in deep ocean floor, EurekAlert!, 14 Feb 2003.
Bugs from the deep may be window into the origins of life — on earth and beyond, EurekAlert!, 14 Feb 2003.
2003, January 10: How a hardy bacterium resists radiation....
2003, January 9: Microbes in ancient ocean crust....
2002, December 20: Radioactivity and water will support bacteria.
2002, November 25: Bacteria could survive interplanetary travel.
2002, November 7: "The universe is full of microbes."
2002, November 4: Bacteria can survive high-speed impacts.
Life In The Rocks, SpaceDaily, 22 Feb 2002.
Rock-Eating Microbes Survive In Deep Ocean Off Peru, ScienceDaily, 22 Feb 2002.
2002, Feb 22: Common microbes survive pressure of 16,000 atmospheres.
2002, January 16: Methanogenic archaea thrive on inorganic rock 200 meters deep....
2002, January 9: Bacteria sent into space survive.
Researchers Find Glass-Eating Microbes at the Rock Bottom of the Food Chain, Scripps News, 27 Sep 2001.
Microbes in rocks and meteorites: a new form of life unaffected by time, temperature, pressure [preprint] by Giuseppe Geraci, Rosanna del Gaudio and Bruno D'Argenio, Rendiconti Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, s. 9 (Mat.) vol. 12, 51-64, 2001.
2001, May 15: A web article about earthly contamination of samples from space....
New Group of Microorganisms Discovered in the Open Sea, NSF PR 01-05, National Science Foundation, 24 January 2001.
Microscopic Stowaways on the ISS, by Patrick L. Barry, Science@NASA, 26 November 2000.
Wherever you look, there's life, by Joanna Marchant, New Scientist, 11 November 2000.
2000, October 19: 250 Million-year-old bacteria have been revived.
Bacteria Aboard Mir Space Station Harmless, SpaceDaily.com, 12 October 2000. "Similar bacteria ...can already be observed in the 'Zarya' cargo unit of the International Space Station, which has been in space for nearly two years."
Mark Schrope, "They're alive," p 15 v 167, New Scientist, 12 August 2000: "Bacteria flourish in the dark cold conditions under glaciers."
2000, August 8: Indestructable germs put to use!
2000, August 6: Germs survive in space.
2000, July 7: Bacteria at the South Pole.
New Find Proves Life Can Thrive in Hostile Conditions, by Stewart Taggart, Space.com, 18 May 2000.
A Mid-summer's Microbe Hunt, by Gilbert Knier, NASA Science News, 3 May 2000. "A team of explorers including astrobiologist Richard Hoover and astronauts Jim Lovell and Owen Garriott traveled to Antarctica in January 2000 to search for extreme-loving microbes."
Reports of "weird life" almost stranger than fiction, by Annette Trinity-Stevens, Montana State University, 30 March 2000.
Elizabeth Pennisi, "Going Deep for an Unearthly Microbe" [summary], p 1580-1583 v 287, Science, 3 March 2000. Microbiologists have recovered a cunning new microbe from the scalding fluid ejected during a submarine eruption. Saganella is "absolutely remarkable" and is a potential model for extraterrestrial life. "If an organism can do this on Earth, there's no telling what it could be doing someplace else."
2000, January 12: ...Bacteria that might have been able to survive a trip from Mars.
1999, December 14: Meet Conan the Bacterium.
1999, December 10: Microbes living deep in million-year-old ice in Antarctica.
The Invisible Emperors: Microbes, not man, are the real powers on Earth, by Charles W. Petit and Laura Tangley, U.S.News online, 8 November, 1999.
1999, October 7: More microbes survive in space.
Great bugs of fire: Protein from volcano-loving bug crystallized in space by David Noever, NASA Space Science News, 16 September 1998.
Earth microbes on the moon by David Noever, NASA Space Science News, 1 September 1998.
1999, August 24: DNA protection by biocrystallization may be crucial and widespread in prokaryotes.
1998, June 26: Microbial life discovered two meters below permanent ice in Antarctica.
1998, March 13: Two scientists exploring a microworld locked in ancient ice have found a wide range of lifeforms...
Deep Dwellers: Microbes thrives far below ground [sic], by Richard Monastersky. ScienceNewsOnline, 29 March 1997.
1997, December 13: A portion of the SPIE 1998 annual meeting will be devoted to investigations of terrestrial extremophiles.

References

1. Surveyor Crater and Surveyor III, NASA's annotated Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. (Search for "little bacteria".)
2. John Postgate, The Outer Reaches of Life, Cambridge University Press, 1994. p 228.
3. Neil A. Campbell, Biology, 3rd edition. The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc., 1993. p 520.
4. Malcolm W. Browne, "30 Million-Year Sleep: Germ Is Declared Alive," p A1,A20, The New York Times, 19 May 1995.
5. Raul J. Cano and Monica K. Borucki, "Revival and Identification of Bacterial Spores in 25- to 40-Million-Year-Old Dominican Amber," p 1060-1064 v 268, Science, 19 May 1995.
6. John Postgate, "Does this bee contain the secret of life?" p 14a The Times (London), 29 May 1995.
7. James E. Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia. W.W. Norton and Company, 1988. p 123.
8. John Postgate, The Outer Reaches of Life, Cambridge University Press, 1994. p 251.
9. S. L'Haridon et al., "Hot subterranean biosphere in a continental oil reservoir," p 223-224 v 377, Nature, 21 September 1995.
10. Leslie Orgel, [quoted in] Here Be Dragons, by David Koerner and Simon LeVay, Oxford University Press, 2000. p 32-33.

Related Reading

Michael H. Carr, "Implications for Life," p 170-183, Water on Mars, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Michael Gross, Life on the Edge: Amazing Creatures Thriving in Extreme Environments, Plenum Press, 1998.
Richard B. Hoover, Editor, Instruments, Methods, and Missions for the Investigation of Extraterrestrial Microorganisms, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 3111 (1997). Note especially Session 6 "Microrganisms from Extreme Terrestrial Environments: Thermophiles and Halophiles" (4 articles); Session 7 "Subsurface Microorganisms" (6 articles); Session 8 "Nanobacteria" (4 articles); and Session 9 "Ancient Terrestrial Microbial Life" (4 articles).
Jocelyn Kaiser, "Can Deep Bacteria Live on Nothing But Rocks and Water?" p 377 v 270, Science, 20 October 1995.
Richard A. Kerr, "Life Goes to Extremes in the Deep Earth-and Elsewhere?" p 703-704 v 276, Science, 2 May 1997.
Michael T. Madigan, John M. Martinko and Jack Parker, Brock Biology of Microorganisms, eighth edition, Prentice Hall, 1997.
Norman R. Pace, "A Molecular View of Microbial Diversity and the Biosphere," p 734-740 v 276, Science, 2 May 1997.
Stephanie Pain, "The Intraterrestrials," New Scientist, 7 March 1998.
Kathy Sawyer, "From Deep in the Earth, Revelations of Life," p A01 The Washington Post, 6 April 1997.
Joseph Seckbach, "Search for life in the universe with terrestrial microbes which thrive under extreme conditions," p 511-524, Astronomical and Biochemical Origins and the Search for Life in the Universe, Cristiano Batalli Cosmovici, Stuart Bowyer and Dan Werthimer, eds., Editrice Compositori, 1997.
Robert F. Service, "Microbiologists Explore Life's Rich, Hidden Kingdoms," p 1740-1742 v 275, Science, 21 March 1997.
Todd O. Stevens and James P. McKinley, "Lithoautotrophic Microbial Ecosystems in Deep Basalt Aquifers," p 450-454 v 270, Science, 20 October 1995. Also "SLiME" at Hanford hints at potential for microbes on Mars, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 24 Oct 1995.