Posts Tagged ‘bacteria’
“Human DNA spreading out from gravity’s steep well like an oilslick”*…
Could the Earth be a life-exporting planet? That’s the curious question examined in a recent paper written by Harvard University astronomers Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb.
The researchers take a novel twist on the controversial notion of panspermia – the idea, propelled into the mainstream in the early 1970s by astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, that life might have started on Earth through microbes arriving from space.
The theory is generally discounted, although eminent astrophysicists such as Stephen Hawking conceded it was at least possible, and a major paper published in 2018 revived the topic big-time.
In their [late December, 2019] paper, Siraj and Loeb reverse the standard assumption about the direction of the microbial journey and ask whether it is possible to that at some point Earth-evolved bacteria could have been propelled away from the planet, possibly to be deposited somewhere else in the Milky Way…
Astronomers suggest microbes might hitch lifts on interstellar asteroids. More on the hypothesis and the evidence that supports it at “Earth bacteria may have colonised other solar systems.” Read the underlying paper at arXiv.
* William Gibson, Neuromancer
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As we ponder the polarity of proliferation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1921 that Albert Einstein startled his audience at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin by suggesting the possibility that the universe could be measured. His talk, “Geometry and Experience” (text here), applied some results of the relativity theory to conclude that if the real velocities of the stars (as could be actually measured) were less than the calculated velocities, then it would prove that real gravitations’ great distances were smaller than the gravitational distances demanded by the law of Newton. From that divergence, the finiteness of the universe could be proved indirectly, and could even permit the estimation of its size.
Later that year, Einstein was announced as the 1921 Nobel Laureate in Physics, an award he accepted the following year.
Einstein in 1921
Happy Birthday, Dante, Mozart, and Lewis Carroll!
“In the end everything is connected”*…
A fungus known as a Dermocybe forms part of the underground wood wide web that stitches together California’s forests [source]
Research has shown that beneath every forest and wood there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another.
This subterranean social network, nearly 500 million years old, has become known as the “wood wide web.”
Now, an international study has produced the first global map of the “mycorrhizal fungi networks” dominating this secretive world…
Mycorrhizal ecologist Dr Merlin Sheldrake, said, “Plants’ relationships with mycorrhizal fungi underpin much of life on land. This study … provides key information about who lives where, and why. This dataset will help researchers scale up from the very small to the very large.”…
The underground network of microbes that connects trees—charted for first time: “Wood Wide Web: trees’ social networks are mapped.”
Read the Nature release that reports the research here.
* The Book of Chameleons
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As we contemplate connection, we might spare a thought for Anders (Andreas) Dahl; he died on this date in 1789. A botanist and student of Carl Linnaeus, he is the inspiration for, the namesake of, the dahlia flower.
Dahlia, the flower named after Anders Dahl [source]
“Such is the essential mystery”*…
For about a billion years, life on earth was a relatively simple proposition: it was composed entirely of single-celled organisms (prokaryotes) in either the bacteria or archaea families. Then, about 2.1 billion years ago, one of those single-celled critters crawled inside another; the two merged, and a new kind of life– multi-cellular (eukaryotic) life– was born…
This inner cell—a bacterium—abandoned its free-living existence and eventually transformed into mitochondria. These internal power plants provided the host cell with a bonanza of energy, allowing it to evolve in new directions that other prokaryotes could never reach.
If this story is true, and there are still those who doubt it, then all eukaryotes—every flower and fungus, spider and sparrow, man and woman—descended from a sudden and breathtakingly improbable merger between two microbes. They were our great-great-great-great-…-great-grandparents, and by becoming one, they laid the groundwork for the life forms that seem to make our planet so special. The world as we see it (and the fact that we see it at all; eyes are a eukaryotic invention) was irrevocably changed by that fateful union—a union so unlikely that it very well might not have happened at all, leaving our world forever dominated by microbes, never to welcome sophisticated and amazing life like trees, mushrooms, caterpillars, and us.
Read the extraordinary story of how one freakish event may well account for all sophisticated life on earth in “The unique merger that made You (and Ewe, and Yew).”
* Lao Tzu
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As we fill out our family trees, we might send microscopic birthday greetings to Carl Woese; he was born on this date in 1928. A microbiologist, Woese recognized and defined (in 1977) the existence of archaea as a third domain of life, distinct from the two previously-recognized domains, bacteria and “life other than bacteria” (eukaryotes). The discovery revolutionized the understanding of the “family tree” of life. And the technique he used to make it– phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA— revolutionized the practice of microbiology.
“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have”*…
From the always-amazing Randall Munroe, who reminds us that bacteria still outweigh us thousands to one– and that’s not counting the pounds of them in each of our bodies…
* “The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.”
― David Attenborough, Life on Earth
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As we watch our weight, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to John Graunt; he was born on this date in 1620. A London haberdasher by trade, Graunt was fascinated the human tide that swelled around him– a fascination that led him to create the first statistically-based estimation of the population of London in his book Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, undertaken as Charles II and other officials were trying to create a system to warn of the onset and spread of bubonic plague in the city. Profiled as one of Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Graunt has been called the first statistician, the first demographer, and was in any case the first statistician to become a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
It’s Alive!…
Bacteria from the belly button of Project Leader Jiri Huler
From the Dunn Lab at North Carolina State University and the Nature Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences: The Belly Button Biodiversity Project.
You are alive, but just how alive? We know that species live under our beds or in our backyards. But how many living organisms are on a square centimeter of your skin? What do they do, and how they differ from those of your neighbor? Very little is known about the life that breathes all over us. Each person’s microbial jungle is so rich, colorful, and dynamic that in all likelihood your body hosts species that no scientist has ever studied. Your navel may well be one of the last biological frontiers. It is time then, to explore…
More, intrepid reader, in the bacteria galleries here.
[TotH to GMSV]
As we wash even more vigorously, we might recall that it was on this date in 1917 that showman Florenz Ziegfeld staged the first Ziegfeld Follies on the roof of a New York theater. (N.B., the date is given by some sources as July 7.) Ziegfeld’s extravaganzas were produced annually through 1931; they featured production numbers choreographed to the works of composers that included Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, and performances by a panoply of stars including Nora Bayes, Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers, Bert Williams, Ann Pennington, Billie Burke, and Anna Held. The shows moved indoors after the premiere; in 1927, Ziegfeld opened the eponymously-named Ziegfeld Theater on Broadway (actually, on Sixth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets). Before Ziegfeld’s death in 1932, he managed the migration of the Follies to motion pictures and radio.
“Flo” Ziegfeld (source)
Poster for the Follies, 1912 (source)
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