Scientists have gotten their closest-ever view of the denizens that inhabit a frigid underworld.
An analysis of the genetic blueprints of nearly 1,400 microbes sampled from one buried Antarctic lake reveals that these single-celled creatures have surprisingly flexible metabolisms and are evolutionarily distant from any other known microbes, researchers report August 18 in Nature Communications.
Dotted with subglacial rivers and lakes, West Antarctica is three times the size of Texas, smothered under a kilometer or more of glacial ice. This cold, dark landscape “is a massive area of our planet [where] we have no idea what is going on,” says Alexander Michaud, a polar microbiologist at the Ohio State University in