- Bacteria and archae have been found at a depth of 800 metres below the Subglacial Lake Whillans in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The depth of the Lake at the drilling site was about 2.2 metres.
- This suggests that other microbial life must be present beneath the10{+7}square kilometres of Antarctic ice sheet.
- These extremophiles (organisms that live under extreme conditions) were found surviving at a low temperature of -49°C, pH of 8.1 (highly alkaline) and 8 megapascal pressure.
- With more than 3,900 operational taxanomical units, the carbon biomass estimates are 3-50 times more than that found under the Ross Ice Shelf.
- The Lake water was not saturated with oxygen and the microbes operate on chemosynthesis by converting the inorganic compounds found in the rock into food, and carbon-di-oxide as their source of carbon.
- Nitrification is the fundamental chemoautotrophic pathway of new organic carbon production.
- Read at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sci-tech-and-agri/diverse-microbial-life-beneath-west-antarctic-ice-sheet/article6336409.ece