Researchers have resurrected ancient microbes that lay dormant in the Alaskan permafrost for about 40,000 years. Permafrost ecosystems exist in a state of suspended animation, but as the planet heats up, scientists are worried that ancient microbes will reawaken and start consuming organic matter, producing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Those gases in turn will exacerbate rising global temperatures, creating a vicious and unstoppable cycle. To understand how quickly that might happen, researchers took samples from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility in central Alaska and then put the samples in lab conditions that mimicked increasingly warm Alaskan summers. The microbes were slow at first to wake up, but after about six months they became highly active and produced visible slimy biofilms. The researchers found that raising temperatures didn’t seem to speed up the microbes’ resuscitation. Instead of brief hot spells, the risk comes from longer, hotter summers that give the organisms time to reawaken, the study concluded.
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