Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Chauvin, Louisiana, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA.
Astrobiology. 2022 Aug;22(8):1009-1028. doi: 10.1089/ast.2021.0120. Epub 2022 May 12.
Humanity's search for extraterrestrial life is a modern manifestation of the exploratory and curious nature that has led us through millennia of scientific discoveries. With the ongoing exploration of extraterrestrial bodies, the potential for discovery of extraterrestrial life has expanded. We may better inform this search through an understanding of how life persists and flourishes on Earth in a myriad of environmental extremes. A significant proportion of our knowledge of extremophiles on Earth comes from studies on deep ocean life. Here, we review and synthesize the range of environmental extremes observed in the deep sea, the life that persists in these extreme conditions, and the biological adaptations utilized by these remarkable life-forms. We also review confirmed and predicted extraterrestrial oceans in our solar system and propose deep-sea sites that may serve as planetary field analog environments. We show that the clever ingenuity of evolution under deep-sea conditions suggests that the plausibility of extraterrestrial life is much greater than previously thought.
人类对外星生命的探索是我们探索和好奇本性的现代体现，这种本性使我们在几千年的科学发现中不断前进。随着对外星球的不断探索，发现外星生命的可能性也在扩大。我们可以通过了解生命在地球无数极端环境中是如何生存和繁衍的，来更好地指导这一探索。我们对地球上极端微生物的大量了解来自于对深海生物的研究。在这里，我们回顾并综合了深海中观察到的各种极端环境、在这些极端条件下生存的生命以及这些非凡生命形式所利用的生物适应性。我们还回顾了太阳系中已确认和预测的外星海洋，并提出了可能作为行星实地模拟环境的深海地点。我们表明，深海条件下进化的聪明才智表明，外星生命的可能性比以前想象的要大得多。
