- #1
icakeov
- 379
- 27
I saw this article recently:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070827174320.htm
It says that "A research team has for the first time ever discovered DNA from living bacteria that are more than half a million years old"
Does this mean that this cell hasn't done any divisions since then (and thus avoided mutation), or somehow didn't have any mutations in all this time and might have kept replicating? Or something else?
And if the answer is the former, is this because due to such cold environment, the cell was just "functioning more slowly" and thus had it's "reproduction" process slow down. My impression was that unicellular organisms constantly grow larger and then eventually split.
In other words, what makes a bacterial cell "old"?
I hope I explained the questions well enough, any feedback super appreciated!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070827174320.htm
It says that "A research team has for the first time ever discovered DNA from living bacteria that are more than half a million years old"
Does this mean that this cell hasn't done any divisions since then (and thus avoided mutation), or somehow didn't have any mutations in all this time and might have kept replicating? Or something else?
And if the answer is the former, is this because due to such cold environment, the cell was just "functioning more slowly" and thus had it's "reproduction" process slow down. My impression was that unicellular organisms constantly grow larger and then eventually split.
In other words, what makes a bacterial cell "old"?
I hope I explained the questions well enough, any feedback super appreciated!