Defrosting Ancient Microbes: Emerging Genomes in a Warmer World

Ice is melting around the world and glaciers are disappearing. Water, which has been solid for thousands and even millions of years, is being released into streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. Embedded in this new fluid water, and now being released, are ancient microbes whose effects on today's organisms and ecosystems is unknown and unpredictable. These long sleeping microbes are becoming physiologically active and may accelerate global climate change. This book explores the emergence of these microbes. The implications for terrestrial life and the life that might exist elsewhere in the universe are explored. Key Selling Points: Explores the role of long frozen ancient microbes will have when released due to global warming Describes how ice preserves microbes and microbial genomes for thousands or millions of years Reviews work done on permafrost microbiology Identifies potential health hazards and environmental risks Examines implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. 1. Reaching Backwards 2. Questions and Answers 3. The Importance of Water and Ice 4. The Diversity of Ice 5. Permafrost 6. What Is Life? 7. Fossils: Marking Time 8. Walking into the Past 9. Isolating and Characterizing Microbes from Ice 10. A Brief History of Research on Life in Ice 11. Ice Core Discoveries 12. Subglacial Lake Vostok 13. Discoveries from Other Ice-Covered Lakes 14. Life Is Everywhere 15. Pathogens in the Environment: Viruses 16. Pathogens, Hazards, and Dangers 17. Everything Old Is New Again, the Ultimate in Recycling 18. Astrobiology—Out of This World 19. Disappearing Ice—Global Climate Change 20. Epilogue "As just one example, the book teaches us that Earth’s glaciers and subglacial sediments contain more microbial cells than all of the lakes and rivers on the surface of the planet combined. The resulting impact on global climate change is and will be huge, as this dead organic matter and newly revived microbes are thawed and summarily dumped into the sea. We lack the comparative context in our brief span of human history to gauge the contours ofthis impact. Paraphrasing Rogers and Castello, our surveillance for the unknown is nonexistent. The volume covers a wide-ranging and at times alarming topic. The human population is growing, global ice melting is increasing, and right about now is when these trends begin to collide. Although the book primarily focuses on records of the past, reconciling these two phenomena arguably has more importance to the future than