“In the classic Darwinian mindset, competition is the name of the game. The best suited survive and outcompete those less well suited. However, when it comes to microorganisms like bacteria, our findings reveal the most cooperative ones survive,” explains Department of Biology microbiologist, Professor Søren Johannes Sørensen.
Tag: bacteria
Should we infect Mars with bacteria?
Natalie Coleman at Futurism: A paper published last month … argues that the “primary colonists” of the Red Planet should be “microorganisms” — the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that support many of life’s processes here on Earth.
Microbes found in some of Earth’s oldest known uncontaminated water
How they got there is apt to be a cause of speculation.
Who knew bacteria could trap light without chlorophyll?
We are “trained,” if you like, to expect certain discoveries (dark matter, for example). Then we learn something significant that really surprises us and allows for new thinking about, for example, ecology.
Researchers: Photosynthesis may be a billion years older than thought … But WAIT!
“Dr Cardona also suggests that this might mean oxygenic photosynthesis was not the product of a billion years of evolution from anoxygenic photosynthesis, but could have been a trait that evolved much sooner, if not first.” So when did the billions of years of Darwinian evolution that “gradually evolved” photosynthesis happen?
How bacteria use harpoons to speed horizontal gene transfer
Well, if that’s a way bacteria evolve, what becomes of common descent and speciation? What do we mean by “bacterial species”?
“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described
Funny how all this just somehow happens even though “ There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws’. If the “fixed laws” produce all this communication, they are clearly intelligence operating under the name “laws.” This is just not what laws do.
John Sanford on claims about brand new nylonase genes
Recently, we noted that John Sanford was speaking at NIH on human health and mutations. Philip Cunningham writes to mention a 2017 paper by Sanford and S. T. Cordova, Nylonase Genes and Proteins – Distribution, Conservation, and Possible Origins on whether the ba cteria that digest nylon evolved new genes: We began this work hoping […]
Quantum biology: Did researchers produce quantum entanglement in living organisms?
The researchers claim it is a first: … a new paper from a group at the University of Oxford is now raising some eyebrows for its claims of the successful entanglement of bacteria with photons—particles of light. Led by the quantum physicist Chiara Marletto and published in October in the Journal of Physics Communications, the […]
Light-loving cyanobacteria found, improbably, nearly 2,000 feet underground
Careful study showed that this was not the result of contamination: In a surprise to scientists, cyanobacteria have been found thriving nearly 2,000 feet below the strange landscape, where sunlight, water, and nutrients are scarce. Researchers previously thought these microbes could survive only while basking in the sun’s rays, although they are otherwise a versatile […]
New “fixed” bacterial Tree of Life looks like a cityscape
Seen from below: Professor Hugenholtz said the scientific community generally agrees that evolutionary relationships are the most natural way to classify organisms, but bacterial taxonomy is riddled with errors, due to historical difficulties. “This is mainly because microbial species have very few distinctive physical features, meaning that there are thousands of historically misclassified species,” he […]
“Fairly sophisticated” bacterial communications pose stark question re evolution
From ScienceDaily: A concept known as ‘percolation’ is helping microbiologists explain how communities of bacteria can effectively relay signals across long distances. Once regarded as a simple cluster of microorganisms, communities of bacteria have been found to employ a strategy we use to brew coffee and extract oil from the sea. Percolation helps the microscopic […]
Bacteria make complex antibiotics that give chemists “cold sweats”
From Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote about three of the deadly neurotoxins being produced by cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during an ongoing algae bloom in South Florida (See Florida’s Deadly Algae Bloom – Why Is It So Dangerous?). The toxins range from structurally simple and easy for organic […]
Bacteria created iron deposits by metabolizing iron?
Researchers: Half of iron atoms in some cores were processed by microbes 2.5 bya/Clark Johnson 2.5 billion years ago? That’s the theory here: These ancient deposits, up to 150 meters deep, were begging for explanation, says Johnson. Scientists thought the iron had entered the ocean from hot, mineral-rich water released at mid-ocean vents that then […]