Applied Microbiology

Subsurface Microbiology

Subsurface microbiology is a rising field in geo microbiology, environmental microbiology and microbial ecology that focuses on the molecular detection and quantification, cultivation, biogeographic examination, and distribution of bacteria, archaea, and eukaryote that permeate the subsurface biosphere. The deep biosphere includes a variety of subsurface habitats, such as terrestrial deep aquifer systems or mines, deeply buried hydrocarbon reservoirs, marine sediments and the basaltic ocean crust. The deep subsurface biosphere abounds with uncultured, only recently discovered and at best incompletely understood microbial populations. So far, microbial cells and DNA remain detectable at sediment depths of more than 1 km and life appears limited mostly by heat in the deep subsurface.