The microbial world drives taxonomists and systematists crazy. Through HGT, they swap genetic material so promiscuously that they defy organized classification. While microbiology is a relatively young science, practitioners quickly realized the reproductively isolated paradigm adduced by E. Mayr would not port well to the realm of bacteria and viruses. Various new schemas have been offered, and Carl Zimmer introduces us to the latest one - oligotyping. This computational approach trades in the term species for operational taxonomic unit, and it derives these units by comparing differences in a single gene common to all living organisms: 16s rRNA. Its not perfect, but it might be the best well get when it comes to the microbiome. How dare nature not conform to our cognitive preferences for wrangling the diversity of life into a systematized whole!
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 15:59:51 +0000
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