NSF OCE 1130146 and the National Deep Submergence Facility
Deep below the surface of the South Pacific Ocean, buried beneath 70 metres of seafloor sediment, there are microbes that may be about 75 million years old. These organisms are among the oldest known life forms on the planet, yet exactly how they manage to maintain their near-immortality has remained a mystery.
James Bradley, a geobiologist at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues think they have solved the puzzle: to stay alive, the microbes stay mostly dead. They …