Alive after 250 years

Hello everyone,

 You all must have read fairy tale of sleeping beauty in which the sleeping beauty went to sleep for 100 years. 

Now scientist have found the microbial version of this fairy tale was revived . This bacterium was found in Mexico in Salt crystals deep inside the earth. But 250 million years??? Wow, now that’s old. The first dinosaurs were just starting to appear on Earth at that time. The scientists believe that the bacteria got trapped in the salt crystals, which were buried 1,850 feet down under what’s now Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. You don't  think that these microbial sleeping beauties are a fairy tale themselves.

In an experiment that was hailed as a breakthrough, the ancient bacteria were revived after having been trapped in a state of suspended animation for 250 million years, making them the world's oldest living things.This bacterium was named Bacillus strain 2-9-3 and produced spores . The strain 2-9-3 was very similar to modern bacteria it could not be all that old. They found that Bacillus 2-9-3 was genetically almost identical to a "modern" species of common bacteria, S. marismortui.The B. permian's sequence differs from that of S. marismortui by only two features. 

The bacterium also raises questions about how life began on Earth. It has re-opened an old debate: whether it is possible for life in the form of DNA or dormant microbes can be carried by asteroids or comets, or drift in interstellar clouds, to fall and colonize suitable planets such as the Earth. Travelling at the speed of light, the nearest star to the Earth would take 4.2 years to reach and the nearest galaxy 2.2 million years. But even huge distances like these might be within reach for bacteria that live for 250 million years.

 Hope You will like this ,

  with love 

       -Dixy