Our Artifical Hypoliths Project

Mountaintops, deserts and polar regions have a lot in common:

They are extreme environments that appear hostile to life at first, but are full of hidden surprises,
Thye have beautiful, other-worldly landscapes, remote and empty,
They are fragile environments sensitive to climate change,
And, they all have hypolithic cyanobacteria.

Hypolithic cyanobacteria under quartz rocks in California's White Mountains (elevation 12,500')

Astrobiology is the study of life in extreme environments in order to understand how to find life on other planets, like Mars. Cyanobacteria are some of Earth’s oldest, simplest and toughest microorganisms. They live in lots of places, not just in extreme environments.

However, wherever conditions get really tough you find them under rocks ("hypolithic" = "under rocks.") Hypolithic cyanobacteria are best known from the Arctic (Devon and Cornwallis Islands) and the Antarctic Dry Valleys.

They prefer translucent rocks like quartz and marble. The rock acts like a little greenhouse window, transmitting some visible light but blocking a lot of the harsh ultraviolet light that can harm living cells. The rocks also trap moisture under them, and protect the cells underneath from extremes of heat and cold.

There's a lot that isn't known about hypoliths. Their growth is difficult to quantify, since it responds to the contours of each rock. However, if you place pre-cut rocks of standardized dimensions in extreme environments, you can rigorously control for variables like light transmission, surface composition and roughness, starting inoculations, and time.

Starting in the Spring of 2010, Sir Francis Drake High School will begin to deploy an array of artifical hypoliths in extreme locations around the world. Each array will be approximately one square meter in area and will include 60 - 100 stones. The stones will be glass and/or marble tiles from building supply stores. They will have a standard length, width and thickness. Variables can include:

Carbonate (marble) vs. silicate (glass),
Light transmission (3 levels?),
Innoculated with local cells vs. sterile when placed into the environment,
Standard size vs. cut smaller,
Rough (sanded) surface vs. factory smooth,
etc?

Places we can put them include California's White Mountain Peak, the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, and (with help from professional scientists who go there) the Arctic, Antarctica, the Atacama, the Namib, and the Sahara.

We are indebted to NASA scientist Dr. Chris McKay, Dr. Henry Sun of Desert Research Institute, and Professor Donald Cowan of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa for teaching us about hypoliths.

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Hypolith habitat at 12,500' elevation near California's White Mountain Peak