Jeffro, which news item are you referring to? Are you asking about the Daily Mail article mentioned in the first post of this topic thread? Or are you referring to the one which said "Bacteria could survive underground on Mars for hundreds of millions of years, new study finds"? The latter article was reported by a real online news agency and it gave Astrobiology as its source. A number of other news sources also reported on the same subject. For examples see the following.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthly-microbes-might-survive-on-mars-for-hundreds-of-millions-of-years/ . It gives some additional details and it says the following. "The study is detailed in a paper published Tuesday (Oct. 25) in the journal Astrobiology."
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/conan-the-bacterium-has-what-it-takes-to-survive-on-mars-180981019/. It says in part the following. "The chance of discovering microbial life on Mars might be better than scientists expected, suggests a new paper published Tuesday in the journal Astrobiology. Researchers say there’s a possibility that ancient, dormant bacteria still exist beneath the Red Planet’s surface."
- https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/world/ancient-bacteria-mars-subsurface-scn .The article is called "Microbes may have survived for millions of years beneath the Martian surface". That article says in part the following.
'Conan the Bacterium’s genomic structure links chromosomes and plasmids together, meaning the cells stay aligned and can repair themselves after radiation exposure. And if a microbe similar to Conan evolved on Mars billions of years ago, when water still existed on the Martian surface, the bacteria’s dormant remnants might just be slumbering deep in the planet’s subsurface.
“Although D. radiodurans buried in the Martian subsurface could not survive dormant for the estimated 2 to 2.5 billion years since flowing water disappeared on Mars, such Martian environments are regularly altered and melted by meteorite impacts,” said study author Michael Daly, a professor of pathology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and member of the National Academies’ Committee on Planetary Protection, in a statement.
“We suggest that periodic melting could allow intermittent repopulation and dispersal. Also, if Martian life ever existed, even if viable lifeforms are not now present on Mars, their macromolecules and viruses would survive much, much longer. That strengthens the probability that, if life ever evolved on Mars, this will be revealed in future missions.” '
There are also various non-English language news articles which report on the same finding which was published in the journal Astrobiology.There is also a related article from August 26, 2020 in "New Scientist" magazine called "Radiation-resistant bacteria could survive journey from Earth to Mars". It says in part the following.
' “If bacteria can survive in space, [they] may be transferred from one planet to another,” says Akihiko Yamagishi at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences in Japan.
“We don’t know where life emerged. If life emerged on Earth, it may [have been] transferred to Mars. Alternatively, if life emerged on Mars, it may [have been] transferred to Earth … meaning that we are the offspring of Martian life,” says Yamagishi. If the journey is possible, then the probability of finding life on planets outside our solar system increases, he says.
Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria are naturally very resistant to radiation, because of their extraordinary capacity to repair their DNA when it gets damaged, says Yamagishi. He and his colleagues wanted to investigate whether this might enable them to survive in the harsh environment of space, where levels of radiation – particularly in the ultraviolet range – are extremely high.
Yamagishi and his team sent Deinococcal cell clumps of various thicknesses to the International Space Station, where they were placed on aluminium plates and attached to the outside of the spacecraft for three years. Samples were taken each year and sent back to Earth for analysis.
Within the clumps that were at least half a millimetre thick, the researchers found surviving bacteria – even in the samples that were left outside the space station for three years. “Ultraviolet light in space is so strong and was expected to kill bacteria. We were surprised to see the surviving bacteria within the cell pellet for up to three years,” says Yamagishi.
Although the bacteria in the outer layer of the clumps were destroyed by the UV, these dead cells seem to have shielded the bacteria in the innermost layers, which survived. These surviving bacteria were then able to repair their DNA from damage and could be grown in the laboratory.
... Journal reference: Frontiers in Microbiology, DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.02050 '