www.the-scientist.com/the-ice-is-a...
09.12.2025 11:01
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A massive thanks to Arwyn, Tom, and Birgit for sharing their awe-inspiring stories with me (from spotting water bears to polar bears!!) and to Stephanie DeMarco for the wonderful edits!
Their work could enable future scientists to study these microbes for their unique adaptations, for instance enzymes that allow them to survive frigid temperatures or tolerate intense radiation.
All this and more in my latest story for The Scientist!
Meet @arwynedwards.bsky.social, Tom Battin, and Birgit Sattler, the researchers racing against time to catalog this vanishing biodiversity, from the depths of the ice sheets around the world to the glacier streams draining the roof of the planet.
Scientists estimate that global glaciers harbor 10^29 cells—a biomass comparable to all the soil in the world’s rainforests. With rising global temperatures, entire clades of glacial #microbes are dying off, decimating living ice and leaving behind just frozen water.
What comes to mind when you think of a #glacier? Perhaps a vision of massive ice deserts, holding most of Earth’s freshwater, yet devoid of life. Only part of that sentence is true!
Welcome to the September 2025 Sharon Dunwoody Science Journalism Mentoring Program cohort at The Open Notebook! www.theopennotebook.com/2025/09/12/w...
The team is already working on generating lipo-cartilage in the lab and molding it into desired shapes, a technique that could drastically improve regenerative surgeries.
More about this in my new story for The Scientist.
www.the-scientist.com/the-discover...
Unlike conventional cartilage that gets its biochemical properties from collagen, the elasticity of lipo-cartilage comes from the fat vacuoles inside the tissue’s cells. It's like nature's #bubblewrap.
Hold the tip of your #ear or #nose, bend it around, and release it. It snaps right back into place! This is thanks to a fat-filled cartilage tissue called ‘lipo-cartilage’, newly discovered and characterized by Maksim Plikus and his team at @ucirvine.bsky.social