Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-frozen-arctic-microbes-
are-waking-up/

In August 2019, Iceland held a funeral for the Okjökull Glacier, the first 
Icelandic glacier lost to climate change. The community commemorated the 
event with a plaque in recognition of this irreversible change and the 
grave impacts it represents. Globally, glacier melt rates have nearly 
doubled in the last five years, with an average loss of 832 mmw.e. 
(millimeters water equivalent) in 2015, increasing to 1,243 mmw.e. in 2020 
(WGMS). This high rate of loss decreases glacial stores of freshwater and 
changes the structure of the surrounding ecosystem.

In the last 10 years, warming in the Arctic has outpaced projections so 
rapidly that scientists are now suggesting that the poles are warming four 
times faster than the rest of the globe. This has led to glacier melt and 
permafrost thaw levels that weren’t forecast to happen until 2050 or 
later. In Siberia and northern Canada, this abrupt thaw has created sunken 
landforms, known as thermokarst, where the oldest and deepest permafrost 
is exposed to the warm air for the first time in hundreds or even 
thousands of years.

As the global climate continues to warm, many questions remain about the 
periglacial environment. Among them: as water infiltration increases, will 
permafrost thaw more rapidly? And, if so, what long-frozen organisms might 
“wake up”?

Permafrost covers 24 percent of the Earth’s land surface, and the soil 
constituents vary with local geology. Arctic lands offer unexplored 
microbial biodiversity and microbial feedbacks, including the release of 
carbon to the atmosphere. In some locations, hundreds of millions of 
years’ worth of carbon is buried. The layers may still contain ancient 
frozen microbes, Pleistocene megafauna and even buried smallpox victims. 
As the permafrost thaws with increasing rapidity, scientists’ emerging 
challenge is to discover and identify the microbes, bacteria and viruses 
that may be stirring.

Some of these microbes are known to scientists. Methanogenic Archaea, for 
example metabolize soil carbon to release methane, a potent greenhouse 
gas. Other permafrost microbes (methanotrophs) consume methane. The 
balance between these microbes plays a critical role in determining future 
climate warming.

Others are known but have unpredictable behavior after release. New 
evidence of genes moving between thawing ecosystems indicates a 
restructuring at multiple levels. In the Arctic Ocean, planktonic 
Chloroflexi bacteria recently acquired genes used for degrading carbon 
from land-based Actinobacteria species. As melt-swollen Arctic rivers 
carried sediments from thawing permafrost to the sea, the genes for 
processing permafrost carbon were also transported.

Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and the death of 
200,000 reindeer and a child. But the hardy spores of Bacillus anthracis 
may represent an exception to the brutal freeze-thaw cycle that degrades 
more delicate bacterial and viral pathogens. Their adaptable 
characteristics have allowed them to remain frozen and viable over 
centuries of inactivity.

Organisms that co-evolved within now-extinct ecosystems from the Cenozoic 
to the Pleistocene may also emerge and interact with our modern 
environment in entirely novel ways. A potential example, the emerging 
Orthopoxvirus species Alaskapox causing skin lesions, has appeared and 
disappeared in Alaska twice in the last five years. It is possible that 
the virus was transmitted through animal-human contact, but this novel 
virus’s origin remains unknown.

The microbiomes of the Arctic contain resilient and tenacious cold-adapted 
microbes. Some species survive as psychrophiles, a type of specialist 
specieshighly adapted to prolonged exposure to subfreezing conditions. 
These species may be lost with warming. Others survive by being highly 
adaptable, inhabiting many, varied niches. Understanding more about these 
generalists’ ecology and genomic diversity offers a window into the 
microbiome of the New Arctic. These generalist microbes that adapt to 
diverse conditions are the likely winners, as we lose the cryosphere.

And then there are microbes that are entirely unfamiliar to scientists, 
which may represent a novel threat.

It is clear that the warmer we make the Arctic, the weirder it will get, 
as temperatures at the surface become more extreme and thawing deepens. 
With the coalescence of microbes reawakening from the deep and surface 
conditions unprecedented in human history, it is challenging to assess 
risks accurately without improved Arctic microbial datasets. We should pay 
attention to both known unknowns, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria, 
and unknown unknowns, including the potential risks from the resurrection 
of ancient and poorly described viral genomes from Arctic ice by synthetic 
biologists.

For all of these reasons, we must come up with guidelines for future 
Arctic research. As travel through the region increases, the likelihood of 
pathogen export and import rises as well. The planetary protection 
guidelines that space agencies follow to prevent interplanetary 
contamination can provide a framework for how microbial investigation can 
safely continue. Biosurveillance measures must be put into place to 
protect communities in the Arctic and beyond. As the Arctic continues to 
transform, one thing is clear: as climate change warms this microbial 
repository during the 21st century, the full range of consequences is yet 
to be told.

Funding provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of 
Technology, under a con-tract with NASA (80NM0018D0004), UK NERC 
(NE/S1001034/1) and Research Council of Norway BIOICE. © 2020. California 
Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors 
and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of any other agency 
or institution.



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