Antarctica’s Deep Lake has been isolated from the ocean for 3,500 years. This unique saltwater ecosystem remains liquid in extreme cold and provides researchers a unique niche for studying the evolution of extremophiles. Deep Lake is dominated by haloarchaea, microbes that require high salt concentrations to grow and are naturally adapted to -20°C. In a detailed analysis published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have, for the first time, been able to present Deep Lake’s microbial community ecology.
