Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile : Implications for Mars

A.A.B. and A.G.F. thank the Project “icyMARS”, funded by the European Research Council, ERC Starting Grant No. 307496. M.P.Z., C.G.S., R.F. and F.J.M.T. thank the funding received from the Dubai Future Foundation through the Guaana.com open research platform (https://www.guaana.com/projects/jeGEimuX6DLCLsbQP).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile: Implications for Mars

Here we inspect whether microbial life may disperse using dust transported by wind in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a well-known Mars analog model. By setting a simple experiment across the hyperarid core of the Atacama we found that a number of viable bacteria and fungi are in fact able to traverse the driest and most UV irradiated desert on Earth unscathed using wind-transported dust, particularly in the later afternoon hours. This finding suggests that microbial life on Mars, extant or past, may have similarly benefited from aeolian transport to move across the planet and find suitable habitats to thrive and evolve..A.B. and A.G.F. thank the Project “icyMARS”, funded by the European Research Council, ERC Starting Grant No. 307496. M.P.Z., C.G.S., R.F. and F.J.M.T. thank the funding received from the Dubai Future Foundation through the Guaana.com open research platform (https://www.guaana.com/projects/jeGEimuX6DLCLsbQP)

Author Correction : Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile: Implications for Mars (Scientific Reports, (2019), 9, 1, (11024), 10.1038/s41598-019-47394-z)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Inhabited subsurface wet smectites in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert as an analog for the search for life on Mars

The modern Martian surface is unlikely to be habitable due to its extreme aridity among other environmental factors. This is the reason why the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert has been studied as an analog for the habitability of Mars for more than 50 years. Here we report a layer enriched in smectites located just 30 cm below the surface of the hyperarid core of the Atacama. We discovered the clay-rich layer to be wet (a phenomenon never observed before in this region), keeping a high and constant relative humidity of 78% (a 0.780), and completely isolated from the changing and extremely dry subaerial conditions characteristic of the Atacama. The smectite-rich layer is inhabited by at least 30 halophilic species of metabolically active bacteria and archaea, unveiling a previously unreported habitat for microbial life under the surface of the driest place on Earth. The discovery of a diverse microbial community in smectite-rich subsurface layers in the hyperarid core of the Atacama, and the collection of biosignatures we have identified within the clays, suggest that similar shallow clay deposits on Mars may contain biosignatures easily reachable by current rovers and landers.The reported research is a contribution from the Project “MarsFirstWater”, funded by the European Research Council, ERC Consolidator Grant No. 818602 to AGF and by the Human Frontiers Science Program grant nº RGY0066/2018 to AAB. This work was also supported by the grant PGC2018-094076-B-I00 to JW and CA from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain