Cultivation and characterization of snowbound microorganisms from the South Pole.

Little is known about microbial ecosystems of interior Antarctica, if indeed such ecosystems exist. Although considerable research has assessed microorganisms indigenous to coastal regions of Antarctica, particularly their lakes, ponds, and soils, to our knowledge only one characterized bacterium, a strain of Pseudomonas, has been isolated from South Pole ice or snow. Metagenomic community analyses described in this work and elsewhere reveal that a diversity of bacteria exists in inland polar snows, yet attempts to culture and characterize these microbes from this extreme environment have been few to date.