3 ms·

I don't think you'd even have to look at extinct life. There's so much life that hasn't been categorized. You can basically take a soil sample from anywhere in

I don't think you'd even have to look at extinct life. There's so much life that hasn't been categorized. You can basically take a soil sample from anywhere in the world and find new microorganisms in it. Archea are a great example of this. They're small, single celled organisms. They're best known as being extremeophiles, but exist basically everywhere. But the majority of them are difficult to culture and study. What's particularly interesting is that viruses that infect archea are known to be very different from other viruses.

qqqqquinnnnn 7y ago
So the crazy thing is that if you take a teaspoon of soil and sequence it for bacterial information, almost all of that information is similar to what's been found elsewhere. If you take that same teaspoon of soil and look for the viral genetic information in there, it's wholly unique. They seem completely unconnected to the rest of life, as far as nucleic acid signatures go.