Some ancient microbes frozen with Ötzi the Iceman are still growing
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Ötzi the Iceman, whose mummified body has been preserved in Alpine ice for 5,300 years, harbors living colonies of ancient yeast and bacteria that researchers have now cultured in the laboratory. Scientists discovered that microorganisms frozen alongside the prehistoric hunter are not merely dormant fossils but metabolically active organisms capable of growth when thawed and placed in suitable conditions. The finding transforms our understanding of Ötzi from a static archaeological artifact into a complex ecosystem, raising unexpected questions about what constitutes a museum specimen and how the body's microbial inhabitants have evolved, or remained unchanged, across millennia.
Ötzi the Iceman, Europe’s most famous mummy, is crawling with microbes, some long dead, some still eking out a living after thousands of years, and some very modern.
After he died in the Ötztal Alps, the Copper Age man now known as Ötzi lay alone and forgotten for 5,300 years, until a group of hikers stumbled on his freeze-dried remains in 1991. Since then, he’s received a lot of attention from scientists, who have sequenced his DNA, pored over his last meal and the remains of his gut microbes, and examined his clothes and his broken tools. Today, Ötzi lies in a high-tech resting place at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy, where, it turns out, his body is still home to a handful of cold-adapted yeast species that have probably been with him since just after he died.
Slightly morbid souvenirs from the Alps
Microbiologist Mohamed S. Sarhan (of the Institute of Mummy Studies at the private Eurac Research center) and his colleagues recently sampled material from Ötzi’s stomach and meltwater from inside his body, swabbed his skin, and even sampled airborne microbes from his frozen storage room and the lab outside it. They also took samples from a block of frozen alpine soil taken from next to Ötzi’s body back in 1991.
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