I saw a TV show on my new 60" HD TV about a census of marine micro organisms
that is currently underway.

They are using cutting edge genetic sequencing tools to count new micro
organisms in sea water. They collect the water, strain it through ever
finer filters to collect a gooey glob of micro organisms and then they
extract their DNA by slicing it into tiny nucleotide bits, then they
replicate these bits, then they REASSEMBLE them back into complete
genomes....and out of this gene puree and reassembly process comes something
a computer program can use to count the number of unique organisms that were
in the sea water sample BEFORE they were chopped to bits.

One of the remarkable things they have discovered, other than the Amazing
and unpredictably large number of new species at the microscopic level are
lots of gene groups with interesting mutations on gene groups which they
already know are used by these organisms to do things like turn light into
energy, break down oily carbon compounds, enhance immunity to cold, etc.

It is just scary what bags of genes called 'humans' can infer about
themselves based on what is literally a sampling of their gene pool.



wrote in message
oups.com...
K Barrett wrote:
Nothing makes you feel older than finding out everyting you were taught
isn't true anymore.

It's even worse when it's your job. Research that required three years
of late nights in the lab when I was a grad student now takes about 15
minutes on the computer. Many of the techniques that I learned are
completely obsolete, and it has been less than ten years since I
defended my dissertation.

Nick