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Conan the Bacterium
An anonymous reader writes "The world's toughest organism, able to withstand thousands of time more radiation than a human, is reported by the Weizmann Institute to have its secret to survival as a tightly packed DNA ring. Their Science article indicates that radiation-induced breakages are held tightly packed rather than floating off into the intracellular fluid. The bacteria,Deinococcus radiodurans, was discovered decades ago in canned food that was sterilized using radiation. Red patches appeared in the cans - colonies of the bacterium - setting off questions as to how it could have survived."
They can have a sample of the chlorox resistant mildew in my shower. I think its started feeding on the bleach, rather than being harmed by it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
... that this stuff doesn't get too close to my homebrew.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
The plural of "bacteria" is actually not "bacterium," but rather "bacterii" (analogous to "virii").
Bullshitii
Bacteria is the plural of bacterium.
The reference, in case you didn't get it, is from this: Conan the Librarian
The plural of "bacteria" is "bacteria". The singular form of "bacteria" is "bacterium". Try a dictionary, either paper or on-line.
I'm not even going to touch the "virii" thing. I think calling yourself a "minor nit" is an understatement.
If I were a metasnob, I'd say I'm pretty sure the fancy plural for virus (lit. "poison") would be viri. No cause for "ii".
:)
But viri is probably wrong. The "i" for plural thing turns out to be a product of some grammarian's fundamental misunderstanding of word derivations. Read this re the most famous example, octopus/octopi/octopoda/octopuses. In brief, "pus" means foot and it makes no sense to hack it up to make a plural.
Ever wonder why flammable and inflammable are synonymous? Same thing -- a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
As for bacteria -- that's already plural. Bacterium is singular. (I think.
What's wrong with Conan the Barbarian? It's even alliterative, and alludes to survivorship. But you knew this
... but if it has ancient origins, isn't it odd it didn't evolve away from mechianisms designed for an absent danger, which I assume entail some cost to the organism? The writer does mention the resistance might be good for drought also. Fascinating.
I like that the name "radiodurans" encapsulates literally the bacteria's claim to fame. How about "Radioduran the Radical"?
"The red bacterium can withstand 1.5 million rads-a thousand times more than any other life form on Earth and three thousand that of humans" -- do they mean all life forms complex and bacteria plus other single-celled organisms? If so, I would indeed wonder whether this bacteria came from somewhere else
...inject it into Keith Ritchards and see if it survives!
So, I guess it's "viruses" after all.
these are the best bacteria to store information in. altho is 1000x human rad resistance that good ? what is cockroaches' rating ?
The OED -- do you subscribe? I've only been able to get it to give me the "word of the day." I have an OED Shorter, but I was too lazy to open it for this silliness.
:)
Apparently there IS a Latin plural word "viri" but it wasn't popular even with the people who spoke Latin. A good argument I read somewhere is that because virus is now an English word, make the plural in the English way -- add "es".
Really, do what works. I have to remind myself to drop octopi. It's fun to out-snob a snob, though.
For a numerical comparison I found some rough numbers for what other living organisms can survive. The unit of radiation used is a Gray, which is the unit used to measure the absorbed dosage of radiation. It does not tell relate the biological effects of that radiation.
These numbers are ones I received from a radiation safety lecture at CERN. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the numbers. But remember, they are obtained from non-controlled experiments (like nuclear accidents) and are an estimates of the amount of dosage needed to kill said organism.
Now according to the Science magazine article, the bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans can stand up to 15,000 Gy of radiation!
The OED -- do you subscribe?
I work at an educational institution so we get it for free. It's a bummer though because I can't use it at home. Oh well.
Personally, I wouldn't have guessed that the official plural form would be "viruses", it sounds too much like "walruses" to me.
Hey. I read an article by that title about this when I was in high school. That was at least 4 years ago. Thats old news, even by /. standards.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Really!! THis shit anit affected by bleach anymore.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The OED -- do you subscribe?
;-)
As a resident of Los Angeles, I'm eligible for an LAPL Library card. With that, I can go to their website, punch in my card number and ZIP code, and go through their subscription to the OED and other fantastic things... from home.
Libraries are so underrated.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
So much acrimony over a technology invented by children...
:)
What? You don't realize language is designed by kids? Go study the formation of new ones, usually the result of multiple societies being crammed together by the latest political upheaval. The parents make the pidgin, which is pretty terrible. The kids make the creole, which is astonishingly correct.
It's not that Virii is right or wrong. It's that Viruses is inconvenient to speak -- it adds a redundant syllable, especially if you try to tack on possession (viruses' make write nicely, but vi-ruh-sis-izz-izz is a nightmare).
We need a better way to say this, but we don't have a good way of converting "-us" into a plural. So we try -ii, based off what we saw happen in, er, some word somewhere -- perhapps based on symmetry with the i early in virus. But lots of other people call bullshit(ii), and demand justification and reasoning and bla bla bla.
Whatever. It's all made by kids to make it easy to say stuff. Quit acting like the world is going to come to and end if it's not precisely like the way a bunch of dead people spoke
--Dan