Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:1143-1146 (2001)
© 2001 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
LETTER |
The Permian Bacterium that Isn't
Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel
There is growing evidence for the presence of viable microorganisms in geological salt formations that are millions of years old. It is still not known, however, whether these bacteria are dormant organisms that are themselves millions of years old or whether the salt crystals merely provide a habitat in which contemporary microorganisms can grow, perhaps interspersed with relatively short periods of dormancy (McGenity et al. 2000
). Vreeland, Rosenzweig and Powers (2000)
have recently reported the isolation and growth of a halotolerant spore-forming Bacillus species from a brine inclusion within a 250-Myr-old salt crystal from the Permian Salado Formation in New Mexico. This bacterium, Bacillus strain 2-9-3, was informally christened Bacillus permians, and a 16S ribosomal RNA gene was sequenced and deposited in GenBank under the name B. permians (accession number AF166093). It has been claimed that B. permians was trapped inside the salt crystal 250 MYA and survived
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