Russian scientists report new DNA under subglacial Lake Vostok
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
Really exciting times :). Can't wait for some more confirmation and the eventual photos!!!
As I understand it, the prevailing notion is that abiogenesis happened only a single time, or at least only a single time that stuck. The life that already exists does a pretty good job of ensuring that any primitive re-developed life never has a chance to actually get started. You would need to completely sterilize the environment to have a shot at witnessing abiogenesis again. Maaaybe all life in the lake died, rendering it sterile, and then new life formed, but that seems super unlikely to me. Why would the existing life die if there was enough nutrients/energy to allow new life to form? (Also, 25 million years is probably far too short of a timeframe to see abiogenisis bootstrap DNA based life)
That might shave a bunch of time off of the time needed.
There are of course two questions - first of the initial evolutionary path and then the path of long term survivability following its isolation beneath the ice. Still even if all this does is provide credibility to the latter long term survivability case it makes me excited about the potential for life in the sub-surface-ice oceans of Europa.
1. This is based on the analysis of a "technological" water that accidentally got into a drilling column (whatever it is) dating back to May 2012, and not on the specifically collected samples from a recent drilling that will be arriving to St. Petersburg in May of this year (apparently it takes 6+ months to ship them).
2. "You have to understand that only a bacteria DNA was found, not the bacteria itself." This is what the representative of the science agency said. Literally.
So.
I wouldn't be getting too excited. This reads like a PR or a vanity piece rather than a proper science report, meaning that is probably aimed at securing additional funding or something along these lines.
(edit) Also, doesn't the process of comparing DNA to the database samples smell a little like CSI bullshit to anyone? This is not my domain, but I would imagine that there's hardly a comprehensive database of a DNA of all existing life forms on Earth. I assume there's a way to see that a DNA is "alien", but why bring up some imaginary database if you are making a serious scientific announcement.
An annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences is available from the DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and GenBank at NCBI. They are basically all three the same database and they exchange updates on a daily basis. However, small timelags in propagating data between the database centers causes minor differences.
Yes... yes indeed.
Is that 90% figure standard convention? Where did it come from? I'm not too familiar with this field, so is that basic textbook stuff? It seems arbitrary.
Could there be life under our feet, fueled by the heat of the molten core with bacteria flourishing in fresh groundwater, or do these types of thermophiles require salt that wouldn't exist there?
There is likely zero evolutionary drive in such an environment to evolve above basic anaerobic life sustaining adaptations and it could even be the case that any evolution that isn't geared towards maximizing survivability in such an environment are actually detrimental. Chances are that any functional mutations will either optimize current processes (and thus help survivability) or create new processes or chemical pathways. The latter would usually expend more energy and could very well cause the mutated species to die off prematurely because their "improvement" is too much to handle in this low energy environment.
Of course, this doesn't preclude the bacteria being so strange that our immune system wouldn't know what to do about it but after 25 million years of sequestration with no "predators", it is unlikely that they developed such a uniqueness.