Life Is… #surprisingthing in #science #poetry

Newcomers hog the spotlight

Age of Fishes, Paleozoic,
Age of Reptiles, Mesozoic,
Age of Mammals, Cenozoic,
Age of Man, Anthropocene,
These all miss the major theme.
Outstanding feature of life’s scene
Is a constant domination,
Now, as ever since creation,
Reigning through life’s whole duration.

Count by biomass or cells,
Eon, epoch, era tells
In what period life dwells.

It’s the Age of Microbes!
It’s been the Age of Microbes.
Will always be,
On land and sea,
Earth in the Age of Microbes.

Poem by Kate Rauner

We humans are impressed by big, fierce creatures – but nature is not. “What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria.” Stephen Jay Gould

Deep Sea Cousins – a poem by Kate Rauner

Prokaryote,
A mass of gel.
Eukaryote
Has organelles.
There lives a form
Deep in the seas
That shares some genes
With both of these.
Say scientists who made the find
“We thought this really weird.”
In analyzing DNA
Surprising genes appeared.
Just as across the eons had,
Existing down below,
Dividing once per decade,
Exceedingly slow.
In the dark and in the cold
Peaceful lives unplanned
Paid no notice to their kin
That floated up to land.
Sorting their relationships
Thanks to discovery
Along with fungus, plants, and us
Twigs on our family tree.

A team of biologists, co-led by Dr Lionel Guy and Dr Thijs J. G. Ettema from Uppsala University in Sweden, has discovered a new group of microorganisms that represents an intermediate form in-between the simple cells of bacteria and the complex cell types of eukaryotes. sci-news.com

“This is an organism living today is a descendent of the last common ancestor perhaps – but is has retained characteristics of the last common ancestor.” independent.co.uk

Researchers have debated whether eukaryotes—the group of relatively complex organisms that includes fungi, plants, and animals—are descendants of archaea or merely their close relatives. Newly discovered archaea from the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean suggest that eukaryotes evolved from archaea. A genomic analysis of one of the organisms, called Loki, reveals that it is the most eukaryotelike prokaryote so far discovered. The study suggests that the ancestor of eukaroytes might have had an actin cytoskeleton and rudimentary internal structures composed of membranes. news.sciencemag.org

The Smell of Life #poem #poetry #NASA #Mars #science

Methane can be made by life
Or hydrothermal systems,
By microbes in the regolith
Or from the rocks, if not them.
Methane doesn’t last for long
Floating in the atmosphere.
Tens of decades, then it’s gone,
Reacting in the sunlight there.
What Curiosity has found,
Unexpected and delighted,
A whiff arising from the ground
Has scientists excited.
It doesn’t mean that there is life
Or that there was in past
It means we have a lot to learn
Before we’ll know at last.
What difference would it make to us?
Bugs aren’t likely to converse.
Even if they share our Sun,
Are we better off or worse?
I for one would thrill to know,
To find conclusive data.
Even if it pays no gold,
Life will always matter.

by Kate Rauner

A couple wisps of methane found on Mars. It might be geochemistry, and there’s more to learn about that, too. But it could indicate the existence of life. Stay tuned.

Huffingtonpost, NYtimes, and many other sources