[1] Abstract: Bioalteration of Quaternary to Early Cretaceous basaltic glass from pillow lavas of the upper oceanic crust can be documented in Deep Sea Drilling Project/Ocean Drilling Program (DSDP/ ODP) samples from shallow to deep drill holes from the north to central Atlantic Ocean, Lau Basin, and Costa Rica Rift, a wide range of marine settings. Biogenerated textures are rooted in fractures and occur as two main types, a granular type and a tubular type. The granular type, common at all depths within the volcanic pile, appears as solid bands, semicircles or irregular patches of individual and/or coalesced spherical bodies, mostly 0.2-0.6 mm in diameter, with irregular protrusions into the fresh glass. The tubular type is more common at deeper levels in the crust and consists of thin tubes, sometime branching bodies, mostly 20 -30 mm long and are more common at deeper levels. The upper crust displays a large variability in the relative importance of biotic to abiotic alteration, and the degree of bioalteration appears to decrease with depth. Thus the fraction of bioalteration of the total alteration of the glass ranges from 20 -90% in the upper 300 m down to a maximum of 10% at about 500 m depth. This might be due to a natural variability in the abundance of bioaltered glass or to biased sampling from low drilling recovery of relatively young crust. The proportion of bioaltered to abiotically altered glass does not show any systematic variations with age of the crust. Thus bioalteration lasts as long as abiotic alteration, i.e., for as long as water is available to the hydration of the oceanic crust. Evidence from heat flow measurements suggests that hydrothermal circulation lasts until at least 70 Ma, and thus the deep biosphere is likely to expand at least into crust of this age.

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Microbial communities inhabiting recent (< or =1 million years old; Ma) seafloor basalts from the Arctic spreading ridges were analyzed using traditional enrichment culturing methods in combination with culture-independent molecular phylogenetic techniques. Fragments of 16S rDNA were amplified from the basalt samples by polymerase chain reaction, and fingerprints of the bacterial and archaeal communities were generated using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. This analysis indicates a substantial degree of complexity in the samples studied, showing 20-40 dominating bands per profile for the bacterial assemblages. For the archaeal assemblages, a much lower number of bands (6-12) were detected. The phylogenetic affiliations of the predominant electrophoretic bands were inferred by performing a comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. Sequences obtained from basalts affiliated with eight main phylogenetic groups of Bacteria, but were limited to only one group of the Archaea. The most frequently retrieved bacterial sequences affiliated with the gamma-proteobacteria, alpha-proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria. The archaeal sequences were restricted to the marine Group 1: Crenarchaeota. Our results indicate that the basalt harbors a distinctive microbial community, as the majority of the sequences differed from those retrieved from the surrounding seawater as well as from sequences previously reported from seawater and deep-sea sediments. Most of the sequences did not match precisely any sequences in the database, indicating that the indigenous Arctic ridge basalt microbial community is yet uncharacterized. Results from enrichment cultures showed that autolithotrophic methanogens and iron reducing bacteria were present in the seafloor basalts. We suggest that microbial catalyzed cycling of iron may be important in low-temperature alteration of ocean crust basalt. The phylogenetic and physiological diversity of the seafloor basalt microorganisms differed from those previously reported from deep-sea hydrothermal systems.

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