Unprecedented Diversity of Marine Bacteria Discovered

[Gokul43201]

New finds from (aquatic) microbial cataloguing studies show that there's way more kinds of bacterial life in seawater than previously estimated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5232928.stm

One litre of seawater can contain more than 20,000 different types of bacteria, scientists have found.

The extraordinary number has been established by an international project attempting to catalogue all ocean life.

It suggests microbial biodiversity is much greater than previously thought, say Mitchell Sogin and colleagues.

Couldn't easily find the original source. Maybe it's not made it's way out yet?

Related article :
https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/bitstream/1912/867/1/3846.pdf

 

[Evo]

Great information gokul!

 

[Mickey]

Cool article! I just want to make sure, if I'm missing something, how is that related article, well, related?

It says that the researchers found more archaea than bacteria in sediments, which I find interesting, because in intro-biology I wasn't taught that there was a difference. I remember learning that all eukaryotes were basically called bacteria and that there were some called "archaebacteria," but that's it. We focused on the eukaryotic/prokaryotic distinction.

The BBC article on the other hand doesn't mention archaea.

Also, here's an interesting Wiki article I found while trying to learn more. It looked like this distinction was controversial for a little while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-domain_system

 

[iansmith]

It says that the researchers found more archaea than bacteria in sediments, which I find interesting, because in intro-biology I wasn't taught that there was a difference. I remember learning that all eukaryotes were basically called bacteria and that there were some called "archaebacteria," but that's it. We focused on the eukaryotic/prokaryotic distinction.

Most textbook don't change and a lot of Prof don't want to change. My intro the micro prof did not like the new classification system because it uses DNA sequence rather than morphology and physiology of organism.

The eukaryotes and prokaryotes is still used because most people are ignorant of the work by Woese et al. or argue for the dichonomy system (i.e. Ford Doolittle) and there still is argument about it

http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/05/are_we_teaching_a_wrong_idea.php

I made a review of Woese theory
http://www.physicspost.com/articles.php?articleId=175