There ’s nowhere on Earth quite like the Atacama Desert . Literally : it exists in abasically unparalleled meteorologic void , rendering it all but devoid of water and family to almost no life at all .
But “ almostno life ” is not the same thing as “ no life-time ” – andincreasingly , science is release upever - more bizarreand conceal organisms that have eked out a living in this tiptop - arid surroundings . unwrap these extremophiles is extremely tricky , though , for one particularly on - brand intellect : in a place as deadened as the Atacama , separating life story from the lifeless is often just too difficult .
At least , that ’s been the face so far . A new study may have just helped the unconscious process along some , though , with the development of a Modern technique for separating extracellular genetic material , or eDNA – that is , fragments of biological structures leave over from dead organisms – from intracellular familial material , or iDNA – the awake stuff .
“ If you extract all the DNA , you have desoxyribonucleic acid from populate organisms and also DNA that can be organism that just died or that died a foresightful time ago , ” study jumper cable Dirk Wagner , a geomicrobiologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam , enunciate in astatementthis calendar week .
And while it is possible to separate out which is which using metagenomic sequencing , doing so requires sufficient expert - calibre DNA . “ [ That ] is often the bottleneck in low - biomass environments ” such as the Atacama , Wagner explicate .
So , what ’s the solution ? Well , it ’s obviously a bit more technical than this , but essentially : they washed the samples . Seriously : Atacama grunge was put in a tube of cold liquidness and shaken a bit ; the resulting dirty liquid state was emptied out , and then the process was repeated . After four rounds , closely all of the eDNA was in the liquid , and nigh all of the iDNA was in the leftover territory sampling .
“ Our findings underline the significance of utilizing substitute genomic techniques in low - biomass surround where traditional DNA- and RNA - based analyses may not be executable , ” the paper reports . “ The results demonstrate the viability of the propose study framework and show that specialised microorganisms are crucial in initial soil formation processes , include microbial - driven mineral weathering , as well as the fixation of carbon and N . ”
But while it ’s good news for Atacama - heads , this unexampled method of microbial analysis is really a proof - of - concept for investigations well outside of this turning point of South America . Not for nothing is the desert sometimes referred to as “ Mars on world " – thanks to its extreme aridity , its specific stain type , and UV radiation levels high than anywhere else on the planet , the Atacama has beenused by investigator as an analogue for the red planetfor tight to two decade now .
“ The subsurface of Mars is often project to be a home ground for microbes , and this is what we on the button see in [ the Atacama ] here on Earth , ” Lucas Horstmann , a Ph.D. student at GFZ who was not involved in the newfangled study , toldEuronewsback in May .
Working alongside Wagner , Horstmann found other similarities that suggest towards the potency for aliveness outside of our own planet : “ The term are not as extreme as on Mars , but it ’s the same pattern , ” he said . “ There are harsh shape on the surface , no water , and high UV radiation , and then you go deeper and find gypsum also present on Mars . ”
So , as David Bowie once queried : is there biography on Mars ? We do n’t yet know – but with a footling rinsing and shake , we may be one step nearer to finding out .
The paper is published in the journalApplied and Environmental Microbiology .
