Antarctic lake microbes exchange DNA

Originally published on October 5, 2013

Scientists have uncovered "promiscuous" microbes that have been shuffling large sequences of DNA beneath Deep Lake, one of the salt lakes found on the Antarctic continent.

The Antarctic land mass rose out of the ocean 3,500 years ago, trapping bodies of water on its surface. These are now lakes found throughout the Antarctic continent. The high salinity in these waters prevents them from freezing over, even well below sub-zero.

Deep Lake is one of these such lakes in Antarctica. Rick Cavicchioli and his team from the University of New South Wales have been studying the microbes that live below its surface. Known as haloarchea, they thrive in high salt concentrations.

Cavicchioli's genomic analyses revealed that different haloarchea species share large stretches of DNA, suggesting that these microbes pass DNA freely, even between distant species. Genes that endowed them with power enzymes and peptides to brave the Antarctic waters have been indiscriminately passed around. Though the different species are likely to share many survival mechanisms, they still hold their own niches and together form a hierarchical community.

Other researchers are looking to repurpose these hardy microbes for applications in cleaning up oil spills in freezing oceans.

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