Some ancient microbes frozen with Ötzi the Iceman are still growing
摘要
一项针对冰人奥茨（Ötzi the Iceman）的最新微生物研究显示，这具欧洲最著名的木乃伊体内仍存有少量耐寒酵母菌，它们可能在其死后不久便存在并存活至今。科学家对奥茨的胃部、体内融水、皮肤及储存环境进行了采样分析，发现部分古代微生物已死亡，而另一些则持续存活数千年。该研究揭示了木乃伊保存过程中微生物的长期存活现象。
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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