In a study published in December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schuerger, Nicholson and their colleagues reported that bacteria isolated from the Siberian permafrost thrived in Mars-like conditions. Those species, from the genus Carnobacterium, actually seemed to favor the low-pressure conditions. “When they grew at zero [degrees C] under CO2, seven millibar atmospheres, they seemed to grow better, at higher rates, than under CO2 at 1,000 millibars or under oxygen at 1,000 millibars,” Schuerger said.
But bacteria need not hail from extreme habitats to flourish under Mars-like conditions. Schuerger shared preliminary, unpublished research during the conference that indicates that low-pressure, or hypobaric, environments actually stimulated the growth of microbes harvested from an unusual source: human saliva. In petri dishes incubated at low temperature under carbon dioxide atmospheres, the salivary flora failed to grow at Earth-like pressures. “Yet these hypobarophiles have popped out” under Mars-like pressures of seven millibars, he said. The specific organisms that thrived in hypobaric conditions have not yet been identified, Schuerger noted in an email, but “the human oral cavity is not a place that one would expect to find microbes that yield such a strange response.”
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But bacteria need not hail from extreme habitats to flourish under Mars-like conditions. Schuerger shared preliminary, unpublished research during the conference that indicates that low-pressure, or hypobaric, environments actually stimulated the growth of microbes harvested from an unusual source: human saliva. In petri dishes incubated at low temperature under carbon dioxide atmospheres, the salivary flora failed to grow at Earth-like pressures. “Yet these hypobarophiles have popped out” under Mars-like pressures of seven millibars, he said. The specific organisms that thrived in hypobaric conditions have not yet been identified, Schuerger noted in an email, but “the human oral cavity is not a place that one would expect to find microbes that yield such a strange response.”
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