Year: 2022

“CLASSICAL BIOLOGY asserts that individual organisms and species are fundamental units of ecology, evolution, and biodiversity, composing an evolutionary history of objectively real, lineage-defined groups in a single-rooted tree of life.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

MICROBIAL DARK MATTER. “Now, metagenomic tools are forcing a recognition that there are no completely objective individuals, no unique lineages, and no one true tree. The newly revealed biosphere of microbial dark matter cannot be understood merely by extending the concepts and methods of eukaryotic macrobiology.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

TWO DIFFERENT KINGDOMS. “The newly revealed biosphere of microbial dark matter cannot be understood merely by extending the concepts and methods of eukaryotic macrobiology. The unveiling of biological dark matter is allowing us to see, for the first time, the diversity of the entire biosphere and, to paraphrase Darwin, is providing a new view of life. Advancing and understanding that view will require major revisions to some of the most fundamental concepts and theories in biology.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

PARADIGM EVOLUTION. “When new discoveries challenge these fundamental concepts, the underlying data models must adapt or become obsolete. For example, the discovery that a gene could occur within another gene rendered obsolete any data model that was based on the fundamental assumption that genes are non-overlapping objects.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

UNCHARACTERIZED LIFE. “Although non-eukaryotic microbes have long been known to be a ubiquitous and substantial component of the biosphere, the vast majority have been unculturable and thus completely resistant to study, rendering them effectively invisible. Until recently, a microscopic examination of any environment revealed a teeming, but largely mysterious prokaryotic world.” https://lnkd.in/ewnQ9Vg View in LinkedIn

AGGREGATE GENOMES. “In 1998, however, a new technology began to emerge that would transform our ability to study prokaryotes: Handelsman et al. coined the term “metagenome” to characterize the collective genomes of all microbes in a soil sample. They proposed to analyze this soil metagenome directly, without first having to culture the organisms in the soil.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

THE UNCULTURED MASSES. “In 2003, Schloss and Handelsman offered the term “metagenomics” to describe “the genomic analysis of uncultured microorganisms.” https://lnkd.in/ewnQ9Vg View in LinkedIn

Common human skin bacteria could protect against cancer, say researchers View in LinkedIn

FIRST GLIMPSE. “Metagenomics has become almost a new kind of instrument—a sort of “genomoscope”—that allows researchers to see the prokaryotic world for the first time. The view is stunning. It is essentially Humboldt in a new biosphere: wherever the genomoscope is pointed, new discoveries swarm into view.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

ONLY A CHINK OF REALITY. “These discoveries are showing that the full biosphere is substantially more complex than previously conceived and that a conception of nature based only on the biology of multicellular eukaryotes (MCEs) is decidedly inadequate. Attempting to understand and describe the entire biosphere using concepts based only on the biology of MCEs is like trying to understand all vertebrates by studying only hummingbirds.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn