Oki-doki, so I looked at some Russian sources and it looks weird. The RIA, the Russian Reuters, says [0] that
1. This is based on the analysis of a "technological" water that accidentally got into a drilling column (whatever it is) dating back to May 2012, and not on the specifically collected samples from a recent drilling that will be arriving to St. Petersburg in May of this year (apparently it takes 6+ months to ship them).
2. "You have to understand that only a bacteria DNA was found, not the bacteria itself." This is what the representative of the science agency said. Literally.
So.
I wouldn't be getting too excited. This reads like a PR or a vanity piece rather than a proper science report, meaning that is probably aimed at securing additional funding or something along these lines.
(edit) Also, doesn't the process of comparing DNA to the database samples smell a little like CSI bullshit to anyone? This is not my domain, but I would imagine that there's hardly a comprehensive database of a DNA of all existing life forms on Earth. I assume there's a way to see that a DNA is "alien", but why bring up some imaginary database if you are making a serious scientific announcement.
> I would imagine that there's hardly a comprehensive database of a DNA of all existing life forms on Earth.
An annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences is available from the DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and GenBank at NCBI. They are basically all three the same database and they exchange updates on a daily basis. However, small timelags in propagating data between the database centers causes minor differences.
1. This is based on the analysis of a "technological" water that accidentally got into a drilling column (whatever it is) dating back to May 2012, and not on the specifically collected samples from a recent drilling that will be arriving to St. Petersburg in May of this year (apparently it takes 6+ months to ship them).
2. "You have to understand that only a bacteria DNA was found, not the bacteria itself." This is what the representative of the science agency said. Literally.
So.
I wouldn't be getting too excited. This reads like a PR or a vanity piece rather than a proper science report, meaning that is probably aimed at securing additional funding or something along these lines.
(edit) Also, doesn't the process of comparing DNA to the database samples smell a little like CSI bullshit to anyone? This is not my domain, but I would imagine that there's hardly a comprehensive database of a DNA of all existing life forms on Earth. I assume there's a way to see that a DNA is "alien", but why bring up some imaginary database if you are making a serious scientific announcement.
[0] http://ria.ru/science/20130307/926380740.html