In 2007, Paul G. Falkowski of Rutgers University and his colleagues reported reviving bacteria trapped in Antarctic ice for eight million years.
Biologists at West Chester University in Pennsylvania said they had revived a bacterium, 250 million years old, that had been trapped inside a crystal of salt mined from the salt beds that house the government's plutonium waste repository in New Mexico.
Two other teams, led by David Karl of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and John Priscu of Montana State University in Bozeman, found "coccoid," or spherical, bacteria in the lake ice, and Karl's team managed to revive the bacteria in his lab.
The bacteria were revived from frozen stocks and grown on Skirrow agar with 5% (v/v) sheep's blood under microaerobic conditions (5% O2, 10% CO2, and 85% N2) at 37°C.
Culture of the bacterium was revived in said medium.
In addition to the work reported today, microbiologists Raul Cano and Monica Borucki at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo say they have also revived several hundred specimens of bacteria from ancient bees, gnats and beetles trapped in amber up to 135 million years old, in work evocative of the science fiction novel "Jurassic Park". Those findings have not yet been reviewed by other scientists.
(The previous record for longevity was held by another bacterium, which was revived after 25m years, after being extracted from an extinct bee trapped in amber).All of which gives rise to another, more fascinating, speculation: could such long-lived spores have been the vessels that spread life through the universe?
After another study, oyster harvesting was revived in Lynnhaven Bay in Virginia after bacteria pollution caused by boaters, sewer systems, farms and pet waste was reduced.
Bacteria can easily be revived and used in a further study at later time points.
Cano revived the first of the ancient bacteria in 1991 and has spent the intervening years verifying his discovery.
