Grasby also sent some of the water and mineral samples to specialized laboratories to investigate whether bacteria or other microbes may have been involved in the precipitation of native sulfur and vaterite. Cell counts and DNA analyses confirm that cold-loving bacteria are present in the spring system. It appears that complex communities of bacteria live within the ice system, and that microbially mediated sulfate reduction is probably widespread.

Following publication of a first article describing the new discovery, astrophysicists and planetary scientists associated with NASA expressed the views that this unique example of life in an extreme ecosystem (bacteria living within or beneath a glacier and performing mineral transformation on Ellesmere Island is an extreme ecosystem) may actually be a perfect analogue to what life may look like on another planetary body of our Solar System – Europa – a moon of Jupiter.