An ASU professor’s discovery of iron-breathing bacteria in Antarctica may bring scientists one step closer to sustaining life on another planet.

Ariel Anbar, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, played a key role in a research team that explored subglacial environments in Antarctica to determine whether life is able to survive there.

The National Science Foundation and NASA supported the research, and the findings were published in Friday’s edition of Science magazine, he said.
Anbar said he analyzed the iron and measured the abundance of isotopes present.

“We studied the chemistry of the iron that was dissolved in these fluids,” Anbar said. “We found bacteria in the glacier that had transformed the chemistry in the iron and was using it as respiration.”

Anbar said this broadens the ideas about what kind of environments life can exist in.

“We’re very interested in trying to understand what are the extreme environments in which life can survive,” he said.

This research also ties in with trying to understand prospects of life beyond earth, he said.

“The more we learn about the range of environments life can live in, the better we can predict about life elsewhere in the universe,” Anbar said.

Jill Mikucki, a research associate at Dartmouth College, was the lead author of the study and said it was very interesting to see life under these conditions.

“It’s very cold, very dark and there’s no new oxygen coming into the system,” she said.

However, the microbial world is very dynamic with how it breathes and what it uses to breathe, Mikucki said.

“It can get away with using stuff besides oxygen, like iron and sulfate,” she said.

Mikucki said Anbar’s work was an important part of the findings.

“When he looked at the samples, he looked at the differences of isotopes in the iron, and he could distinguish whether or not life had left a fingerprint on it,” she said.

This shows how life is able to grow for extended periods of time in isolation, she said.

“If life can sustain itself in isolation below this glacier, then why not under other icy areas like the ice caps on Mars or the moons of Jupiter?” Mikucki said.

Roberta Marinelli, program director for the Antarctic organisms and ecosystems program in the Antarctic Sciences Division at the National Science Foundation, said Mikucki’s research is important for scientists because it allows them to further identify environments within which life can exist.

“It advances the understanding of microbial evolution, earth system history, astrobiology and how organisms adapt to changing environments,” he said.

Marinelli said much of what people know about the Earth’s response to changing climate rests in the understanding of geology and biology in the geologic past, and this study enhances peoples’ knowledge of that area.

Mikucki said glaciers are a really interesting system to study because of the information they can provide.

“It gives insight into the creativity and tenacity of life,” she said.

Reach the reporter at charlsy.panzino@asu.edu.