The Geomicrobiology of Vostok Ice: Implications for Life in Lake Vostok

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Recent studies have revealed a number of subglacial lakes beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Lake Vostok, lying four kilometers beneath the ice surface is the largest of these lakes with a surface area near 10,000 square kilometers and a depth exceeding six hundred meters. A permanent ice sheet covered the lake about fifteen million years ago, isolating it from the atmosphere. This interdisciplinary project will examine the following: the physical stresses in deep glacial and accretion ice; the role of clathrates on gas dynamics within the lake; the origin of microbes in accretion ice; the physiological state of ice-bound microbes; the geochemistry of the ice column (bulk and within ice veins); and living microbes in ice veins that form at triple junctions in the ice crystal matrix. Collectively, results from this study will provide new information on the deepest ice yet collected and allow boundaries to be placed on conditions within Lake Vostok. Considering the enormous financial and logistic effort that will be required to obtain uncontaminated samples from Lake Vostok, it is imperative that conditions within the overlying ice, which presumably supplies the nutrients and biological seed to the lake, be understood before any attempt is made to sample the actual lake water. Information collected will provide critical background for the development and implementation of a sterile sample recovery system. Results from this interdisciplinary study will allow meaningful hypotheses to be drawn regarding the physical, chemical and biological properties of the Lake Vostok.