Friday, August 19, 2005

The perfect life form.

I believe I've found my target lifeform. A simple bacteria that basically wins the evolutionary race by having a perfectly compact genome. I think I'm going to use this one to construct my nanobot army from. Then starts the revolution.

Microbe has huge role in ocean life, carbon cycle

Researchers at Oregon State University and Diversa Corporation have discovered that the smallest free-living cell known also has the smallest genome, or genetic structure, of any independent cell - and yet it dominates life in the oceans, thrives where most other cells would die, and plays a huge role in the cycling of carbon on Earth.

In nature, apparently, bigger is not always better.

In a publication today in the journal Science, scientists outlined the growing knowledge about SAR11, a group of bacteria so dominant that their combined weight exceeds that of all the fish in the world's oceans. In a marine environment that's low in nutrients and other resources, they are able to survive and replicate in extraordinary numbers – a milliliter of sea water off the Oregon coast might contain 500,000 of these cells.

[...]

No comments: