Glaciers withdraw, small life forms appear

The research team at the University of Colorado in Boulder worked at an altitude of 16,400 minutes in the Andes, Peru discovered how the barren, inert land after the cold waters had withdrawn, could quickly be forming a prosperous bacterial community, creating conditions for developing lichen, moss and other alpine plants.

This is the first discovery to reveal how the bacteria can live in one of the harsh environments on Earth, and at the same time make sense in explaining how life can exist on stars. Mars, Professor Steve Schmidt of CU-Boulder Department of Ecology and Evolution at CU-Boulder, said. The study provides new knowledge about microbial adaptability to modern global warming in the ecology of the Earth.

An article on this topic is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, National Academy of Sciences, United Kingdom. The authors include Sasha Reed, Diana Nemergut, Stuart Grandy, Andrew Hill, Elizabeth Costello, Allen Meyer, Jason Neff and Andrew Martin of CU-Boulder, and Cory Cleveland of Montana University, and Michael Weintraub of Toledo University.

The researchers discovered three types of photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria, living in this barren land for the first year, falling from small garbage bags clinging to the retreating or melting glacier in the form of spore. Only 3 years later there were 20 different species of bacteria, developed by using carbon and nitrogen in the air.

'The most astonishing finding is the development of diversity in just four years on the land of seemingly barren land' , Schimidt, his research is funded by the National Science Foundation's Microbial Survey Program. The CU-Boulder team conducted research from 2000 to 2005 on Peru's Puca glacier - recently elevated to 60 minutes a year - by collecting samples and testing chemical composition and solids. of soil.

The Boulder University of Colorado study of bacteria below the Puca glacier at an altitude of 16,400 minutes on the Andes, Peru shows for the first time how life was formed and developed in one of the etched environments Harshest on Earth.

In 2005, Schmidt's team was awarded NSF grants worth $ 1.75 million over five years to identify and analyze new bacteria in the sciences that live in cold and harsh climates. Global. The team used a new technique to extract DNA from soil to identify new bacterial groups and polymerase chain reactions, or PCR, to exaggerate and know them, providing an understanding of bacterial diversity. in high mountain areas.

Another surprising finding on the Puca glacier is how microbes stabilize soil and prevent erosion on the slope by using their fiber structure to pull soil particles together. CU-Boulder researchers also discovered that bacteria secrete glue-like sugar compounds to bind soil particles together.

In addition, they found that the rate of nitrogen agglutination - the process of nitrogen gas being transferred by bacteria into soil compounds like ammonia and nitrate - increased 100-fold in the first five years. The research team wrote in Proceedings of the Royal Academy: 'Our results indicate that photosynthetic and nitrogen-agglutinating bacteria play an important role in fertility and strengthening ecological sequences in nearby lands. glaciers are retreating on high mountain terrain '.

Global climate change has accelerated the shrinking pace of glaciers in high-altitude and high-altitude environments, revealing completely lifeless lands for centuries or millennia, he compares. The harsh Andean Valley of Antarctica in the Antarctic, researchers from NASA's Space Biology Institute are currently conducting research on the area because the harsh conditions there are thought to be similar to Mars.

"This kind of research helps us understand the function of cold regions on Earth, and the reaction of the biosphere to future climate change," Schmidt said . Research may lead to the discovery of new antibiotics, as well as enzymes that can function in cold temperatures and can be used to promote chemical reactions that often require a large amount of heat.

Because of rapid climate change in high altitude areas, time is of the essence for researchers of CU-Boulder and others working with microorganisms in harsh environments. Schmidt explains: 'We are racing to identify new species and bring them into the lab before larger changes occur and they disappear'.