A recent paper looks at the revival rates for microorganisms found in ancient permafrost cores from the Permafrost Research Tunnel near Fairbanks, Alaska.
The researchers compared microbial growth rates, marker gene sequences and greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4) emissions across cores held anaerobically at ambient (ā4Ā°C) and elevated (4Ā°C, 12Ā°C) temperatures. They found that the microbes responded slowly to the changed conditions in the first month following thaw, but within 6 months the community structure had changed dramatically. Microbial communities that survived and proliferated after burial for thousands of years did not resemble those on the surface, and exhibited reduced diversity. The researchers also noted that microbes in subsurface permafrost rely on different kinds of lipids to construct their cell membranes, preferentially producing glyco- rather than phospholipids: these compounds may have helped them survive freezing, dark conditions for millenia.
For more on this including potential insights into GHG emissions from thawing permafrost, see the paper (below).Ā We are also glad to note that the team used stable isotope probing (SIP) to obtain their resultsĀ –Ā one of the techniques profiled in a recent paper by our Bioinformatics WG colleagues!
Microbial resuscitation and growth rates in deep permafrost: Lipid stable isotope probing results from the permafrost research tunnel in Fox, Alaska.Ā Caro, T.A., McFarlin, J.M., Maloney, A.E., Jech, S.D., Barker, A.J., Douglas, T.A., Barbato, R.A. and Kopf, S.H., 2025. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences,Ā 130(9), p.e2025JG008759.
Innovative chemical biology tools for monitoring activity in complex microbiomes.Ā Amekan, Y., Redeker, K.R. and Chong, J.P., 2025. Current Research in Biotechnology, p.100334.
