This is interesting and important but fun fact, maybe not the first case of 2 billion+ yr old microbes. There were microbial organisms found in a mine in Minnesota coming from 2.6 billion year old rock and they suspected they were coming from water trapped when the rock, banded iron formation, formed in an ancient ocean. IIRC there were two bacteria - one that eats sulfur and excretes iron, and one that eats iron and excretes sulfur.
Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota. Great tour.
https://www.twincities.com/2008/12/22/soudan-mine-studied-for-bacterial-life/
imagine two societies spending billions of years in the dark depths eating the others poop
nature is beautiful
It’s as though the yin and yang are just a black turd and a white turd clumped together…. Beautiful.
He coated the rock in “a special epoxy” to prevent it from crumbling during slicing. Then, he washed the thin sections in a special dye that stained the DNA of the microbial cells.
What does that mean—I thought DNA was smaller that the wavelength of visible light? I guess it’s some larger molecule that binds to the DNA to make it more visible, but if that’s the case, “tagging” seems like a more appropriate term than “staining”.
