the Antarctic plateau, also known as Geographic South Pole Plateau or Polar Plateau It is part of the Antarctic polar cap and is located in the central part of East Antarctica. This area includes the geographic South Pole and extends eastward to more than 1,000 inhabitants, including Queen Maud Land and the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Although the mode of The life of microorganisms in nature is virtually unknownExperts indicate that they can develop survival strategies during adverse periods and that various microorganisms can live in conditions that are very different from those that can be considered ‘optimal’.
Microbial life on the Antarctic Plateau
The Antarctic Plateaua vast expanse of ice and snow, more than 3,000 meters above sea levelr, is one of the most extreme environments on Earth. It has the lowest temperature recorded (-89.2ºC, although it is estimated that -93.2ºC can be reached), while being one of the places on Earth with the least recorded rainfall and the driest.
The low temperature and absolute humidity, together with high UV radiation during the summerThe scarcity of liquid water and scarcity of nutrients make the Antarctic Plateau an excellent natural laboratory to explore the extremes of life on Earth.
“This environment is perhaps the best terrestrial analogy to study the possibility of life on other worlds, such as the icy moons Europa (Jupiter) and Enceladus (Saturn), or the large icy regions of the planet Mars, which form the Antarctic Plateau. ideal place to develop instrumentation for astrobiological purposessuch as the “Life Detector Chip or LDchip (for Life Detector Chip),” says Professor Victor Parro, INTA researcher at the Astrobiology Center (CAB), INTA-CSIC.
However, logistical constraints, cold, remoteness and altitude make it difficult to access the Antarctic Plateau for in situ sampling and studies. It is considered the last virgin environment on Earth, where the wind, as a means of transporting the deposited particles, has been proposed as the main cause of the entry and spread of life, nutrients and also pollutants.
The Wind Sled solution without emissions
He the use of heavy vehicles with combustion engines is expensive and pollutinginefficient and of great logistical complexity to travel long distances. “The WindSled (WindSled) offers unique features for the scientific exploration of large areas with ice or snow: large capacity for both crew (4-5 persons) and scientific-technical load (>500 kg equipment), robust (easy to repair) , very versatile (modular and scalable) and zero emissions while traveling,” explains Spanish explorer Ramón Larramendi, creator and developer of the WindSled.
During the 2018-2019 campaign on the Antarctic Plateau, four well-trained crew members covered 2,538 km through the western sector of the Antarctic Plateau, from the vicinity of Novolazarevskaya Station to Fuji Dome (>3,500 m altitude).
The WindSled carried 200 kg of scientific instruments to conduct multiple in situ sampling and scientific experiments, including the detection of microorganisms using a portable immunosensor (LDChip) designed for the detection of life in planetary exploration, a collector of airborne aerosols and biological material capable of operating in the extreme conditions of the expedition, and continuous monitoring of possible liquefaction events along the transect.
“This work demonstrates the value and importance of using relatively inexpensive sampling platforms, where in situ observations are lacking, but which essential for understanding current climate change and predicting the future and its consequences,” said Professor Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, US, and co-author of the paper.
Antarctica archive of climatic and atmospheric events
The ice on the Antarctic Plateau represents an archive of past climatic and atmospheric events, as well as its presence historical accumulation of biological material. To date, few studies have focused on the microbiology of the High Antarctic Plateau, with studies only examining surface snow up to 30 cm deep.
“We describe the first microbial profile of air up to 4 meters deep from snow/ice on the Antarctic Plateau at three significantly remote locations, examining the bacterial communities trapped in snow/ice for the past 40-50 years. This is the first time that microorganisms have been collected and identified from the air on the Antarctic Plateau,” says Prof. Antonio Quesada, Autonomous University of Madrid.
‘It’s not just the first time They take samples of the microorganisms that circulate through the air of this immense area on the planet, it is also the first time that the new collectors and the statistical tool that we have had to invent to understand its origins have been used,” explains Professor Ana Justel of the Autonomous University of Madrid.
The Antarctic Plateau is also one of the driest places on Earth. The combination of extreme cold and drought makes it an environment similar to that of Mars The average annual surface temperature near the equator is -58ºC and the atmospheric water vapor content is negligible. As on Mars, water on the Antarctic Plateau is physically found in the form of ice or vapor, but rarely in liquid form.
“With WindSled we can delve into the most remote places in Antarctica and study under what conditions liquid water can form in a frozen desert, for example through the liquefaction of certain salts, to understand similar processes on Mars. We have shown that at certain times during the more than 2,500 km traveled, these liquefaction phenomena are possible and can provide water for maintain minimal biological activity. “Perhaps similar phenomena could occur in some parts of Mars,” said Dr. Alfonso F. Davila, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Center in California.
Transport vectors, such as snow/ice particles and windblown bioaerosols, can determine the biogeographical distribution of the biological burdendepending on the prevailing winds, as the authors of this work have shown. The use of the LDchip biochip to detect life or its remains during the campaign made it possible to detect the presence of certain microorganisms, including cyanobacteria, in ice core samples.
Travel in time
“It is yet another demonstration of the LDChip’s great capability in the search for life in planetary exploration,” said Dr. Mercedes Moreno, researcher from the INTA SOLID-LDChip team at the CAB. Once in the laboratory, a new species of cyanobacteria of the genus Gloeocapsopsis was isolated and grown from one of the control samples at a depth of 3 to 4 meters, with an estimated age of 30-40 years.
It’s like ‘traveling in time’ and rescuing biological material, still viable, that was deposited decades ago. How many The deeper the sample, the older its age. The viability of micro-scale liquefaction phenomena suggests that in certain microenvironments, for example salt crystals transported from the coast and deposited on ice, or aerosols containing concentrated biological material, minimal metabolic activity could occur to support the life of some microorganisms in to stand firm.
Without a doubt, the WindSled windsled is a truly mobile scientific platform, zero emissions and with a large loading and crew capacity, allowing unprecedented and planet-friendly research to be carried out on the unexplored Antarctic plateau and other large ice masses. Using the Windsled on a regular basis The world’s frozen plateaus could mean access to ecosystems barely studied, making our researchers at the forefront of the study of the cryosphere.