Ancient microbes in a salty, ice-sealed Antarctic lake

摘要

Antarctica's Lake Vida, which is five times saltier than seawa-ter and permanently covered by more than 20 m of ice, represents one of the least hospitable ecosystems , on Earth. Using sanitary procedures and equipment, Alison Murray et al. (pp. 20626-20631) removed cores of ice from the frozen lake, collected samples of the brine in the lake ice, and assessed the brine's potential for sustaining life.