The habitability of Mars is of interest to astrobiology, life detection, and planetary protection efforts, and permafrost is considered a Martian analogue environment. In 2013, a group of US and Russian scientists reported the isolation from a borehole in Siberian permafrost of several bacteria belonging to the genus Carnobacterium that could grow in the laboratory under a combination of Mars pressure, temperature, and atmospheric composition(1). One of these isolates has been formally classified as a new taxon, named Carnobacterium inhibens subsp. gilichinskyi in honor of the late David Gilichinsky, pioneer in permafrost microbiology and astrobiology.
These findings were recently presented in the paper, “Proposal to rename Carnobacterium inhibens as Carnobacterium inhibens subsp. inhibens subsp. nov. and description of Carnobacterium inhibens subsp. gilichinskyi subsp. nov., a psychrotolerant bacterium isolated from Siberian permafrost,” published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology by W.L. Nicholson, K. Zhalnina, R.R. Oliveira, and E.W. Triplett. The work was supported by the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology element of the NASA Astrobiology Program. Additional support came from the Florida Agriculture Experimental Station and the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
(1) W.L. Nicholson, K. Krivushin, D. Gilichinsky, and A.C. Schuerger (2013) PNAS, 110: 666-671.
Source: [International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology]
