rganism t causesgangrene, can reproduce in nine minutes. At suce, a single bacterium could ticallyproduce more offspring in tons in tesupply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280,000 billion individuals in a singleday,” according to t and Nobel laureate Cian de Duve. In t about manage a single division.
About once every million divisions, tant. Usually tant—c just occasionally terium isendoal advantage, sucy to elude or stack ofantibiotics. ity to evolve rapidly goes anotage. Bacteriasion. Any bacterium can take pieces of genetic coding from any other.
Essentially, as Margulis and Sagan put it, all bacteria sive c occurs in one area of terial universe can spread to any ot’srato an insect to get tic coding to sprout means t from a genetic point of vieeria iny, dispersed, but invincible.
t anyt givettle moisture—as ed from not als in . Scientists in Australia found microbes knoivorans t livedin—indeed, could not live —concentrations of sulfuric acid strong enougo dissolvemetal. A species called Micrococcus radiope tanksof nuclear reactors, gorging itself on plutonium and eriabreak do at all.
ts and lakes of caustic soda, deep insiderocks, at ttom of ter in tarctica, and seven miles doimes greater t t to being squasyjumbo jets. Some of to be practically indestructible. Deinococcus radiodurans is,according to t , “almost immune to radioactivity.” Blast its DNA ion,and tely reform “like ttling limbs of an undead creature from ahorror movie.”
Per extraordinary survival yet found of a Streptococcus bacteriumt ood on two years.
In s, ts in prepared to live. “t s so t tually startto melt, teria even toria Bennett told me.
In tists at ty of Cin and Frank Greer,announced t ted from oil rains of bacteria t dept. tion ally preposterous—to live on at t—and for fifty years it taminated t ofmicrobes living deep all to do rocks or, ratuff t’s in rocks—iron, sulfur, manganese,and so on. And too—iron, c, even u