EdEarl Posted August 30, 2013 Posted August 30, 2013 BBC News A diverse range of life forms exists deep below Earth's surface, scientists have concluded, but they survive at an incredibly slow pace. Long-lived bacteria, reproducing only once every 10,000 years, have been found in rocks 2.5km (1.5 miles) below the ocean floor that are as much as 100 million years old. How can anything avoid being eaten for that long? They live in rock, which must help longevity, but they are surrounded by up to 10x viruses per bacteria. They must be immune to the viruses, or have a symbiotic relationship. Will we find similar life on asteroids?
CharonY Posted August 30, 2013 Posted August 30, 2013 Viruses are much more fragile than bacteria and need a host to reproduce. In contrast to bacteria they cannot just go out and seek prey. So if their host metabolizes and reproduces slowly, so do they. The cold could conserve the viruses so after escaping their host they would just be lying there and accumulate over time (very, very slowly). Essentially there is nothing that is eating either the viruses or the bacteria in any significant amount of time allowing them just to hang on there.
Gees Posted August 30, 2013 Posted August 30, 2013 Hi EdEarl; Not being much of a scientist, this is probably a stupid question. But is it possible that the viruses don't recognize the bacteria as life forms, so they do not attempt a parasidic relationship with them? After reading the link, which explained how slow the metabolism in these bacteria could be, it reminded me of endospore. Wiki link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endospore Endospore can go for centuries or even hundreds of thousands of years without eating and sometimes have a metabolism that it not discernable. I suppose they could be in asteroids. G
EdEarl Posted August 30, 2013 Author Posted August 30, 2013 G, I'm not a biologist, so cannot answer your question. Sorry.
CharonY Posted August 30, 2013 Posted August 30, 2013 Viruses obviously need hosts and if they were not able to use the cells being present, there would be no viruses to begin with. Also the recognition of hosts is mostly based on surface interactions between phages on hosts and has little with metabolic activities per se.
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