A BUG discovered deep in the ground has got astrobiologists buzzing. The organism’s unique ability to live in complete isolation from other species, or even light or oxygen, suggests it could be the key to life on other planets.
It was discovered in fluid-filled cracks in a South African gold mine, nearly 3 kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface. When Dylan Chivian of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, analysed the fluid, he expected to find genes from a mix of species. Instead, he found that 99.9 per cent of the DNA belonged to just one bacterium, a previously unknown species…
