Nobody has seen Lake Vostok because it sits beneath four kilometres of solid ice. If the lake ever had direct contact with the air above it, it ended 30 million years ago. In 1995, drillers stopped just short of entering the lake; samples from the ice they removed suggest that whole communities of organisms may live in its still, dark waters, having evolved completely separately from life on the rest of the planet. Until someone can figure out a way of doing so without contaminating its pristine waters, sampling of Lake Vostok has been put on hold, but not so the rest of the continent. Antarctica and the surrounding waters have become a "hot spot" for bio-prospectors collecting and screening biological samples for commercially useful potential. What makes the Antarctic so attractive is the uniquely severe environments it includes. The physiological adaptations that Antarctic organisms have made to extreme conditions make them genetically distinct from organisms living in more benign environments. And genetic novelty drives today's biotech industry.
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