Skip to main content

Scientists revive 100-million-year-old microbes, insist it’s totally safe

Researchers are reviving deep-sea microbes that have been dormant for millions of years, since the time of the dinosaurs. Because what could go possibly wrong?

Recommended Videos

If you ask Steven D’Hondt, a professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, not very much. “There’s not much risk inherent in it,” he told Digital Trends. “Marine microbes don’t generally infect people, and these are marine sedimentary microbes that have been buried almost 100 million years longer than people have been in the world. So they’re not adapted to infect people.”

The work is pretty fascinating. In the study, an international team of researchers demonstrated that, under the right lab conditions, microbes from ancient sediment can be revived and made to multiply — despite being trapped in starving conditions for unimaginably long periods of time.

The samples were taken by drilling up to 75 meters (almost 250 feet) below the seafloor in close to 6 km (19,700 feet) of water. They were brought up to a ship and analyzed. Each sample was split into subsamples by Yuki Morono of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). Morono used one subsample to count the number of microbes in the subsample volume while freezing another at ultra-low temperatures and experimenting on another. Back on dry land, Morono later further examined the subsamples in a lab to see how the 100-million-year-old community grew and reproduced when given different types of food.

The discovery challenges our understanding of how little energy it takes for organisms to survive and how long a microbial community is able to live under food-scarce conditions. That could translate to clues about how organisms survive on other harsh worlds, such as Mars.

“As biologists begin to understand the mechanisms that they use to survive, we may better understand how pathogens survive without visible activity in their hosts — like inactive tuberculosis — and how cells survive as they move from one livable habitat to another,” D’Hondt said.

And returning once more to that question of whether this is all a bit risky, Yuki Morono was ready to put minds at ease. “Although the recovered microbes are widely recognized to be low risk, we have been and will be conducting all the experiments in the biologically contained laboratory, to further minimize the risk as close as to zero,” Morono told Digital Trends.

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Aptera’s 3-wheel solar EV hits milestone on way toward 2025 commercialization
Aptera 2e

EV drivers may relish that charging networks are climbing over each other to provide needed juice alongside roads and highways.

But they may relish even more not having to make many recharging stops along the way as their EV soaks up the bountiful energy coming straight from the sun.

Read more
Ford ships new NACS adapters to EV customers
Ford EVs at a Tesla Supercharger station.

Thanks to a Tesla-provided adapter, owners of Ford electric vehicles were among the first non-Tesla drivers to get access to the SuperCharger network in the U.S.

Yet, amid slowing supply from Tesla, Ford is now turning to Lectron, an EV accessories supplier, to provide these North American Charging Standard (NACS) adapters, according to InsideEVs.

Read more
Agatha All Along creator wrote multiple post-credits scenes for the Marvel series that weren’t used
Kathryn Hahn stands next to Joe Locke in Agatha All Along.

Agatha All Along is one of the most widely liked titles that Marvel Studios has released in, well, a while. The WandaVision spinoff premiered in late September and did a lot to win over even some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's more skeptical fans across its nine episodes. While Agatha All Along does set up some exciting future possibilities for several of its characters, though, its finale doesn't include a single post-credits scene.

According to Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer, that isn't because she didn't have any ideas for one. When asked about the series' lack of a post-credits tag, Schaeffer told Variety, "That’s a Marvel decision. I know nothing more than that." The writer and showrunner went on to reveal that she actually wrote multiple potential post-credits scenes for Agatha All Along, none of which were ultimately used because of behind-the-scenes decision-making by Marvel.

Read more