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New Bacterium Lives On Caffeine
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "A newly-described species of bacterium, Pseudomonas putida has been found to live on pure caffeine. The little jaspers metabolize caffeine into carbon dioxide and ammonia. They were found living in a flower bed on the University of Iowa campus, not in the drain of an espresso machine as one might expect. The paper presenting the research will be presented at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans this month where caffeine metabolism will have to contend with the traditional ethanol metabolism."
But when I ingest caffeine it just makes my pee smell like coffee.
Nobodies Prefect
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Word is they were pretty hard to find at first, on account of them vibrating right off the slide.
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Pretty soon they'll start infesting coffee and energy drink factories. Then we're really fucked.
It's called the Sales Department.
...are they good programmers?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
And what does its close cousin, Pseudomonas Pendejo, live on?
This changes my stance on evolution. Now I am 99.999% certain that I evolved from this particular type of bacteria.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
You can't just go around metabolizing people's caffeine and expect no retribution. We need that caffeine to survive boring meetings.
Kill it! Kill it with fire! It must be stopped! Don't let it take our caffeine!
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
They're at a university and they live on caffeine. So they're just like any other university student right?
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
If they could just get the metabolism loop the run on caffeine in the daylight and feed into the alcohol metabolism at night I would be in heaven!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Yours sincerely has been doing it for ages now!
You realize that we're all going to be out of jobs, right?
The free market will decide to employ the most efficient critters at converting caffeine into CO2 and ammonia. The fact that our new overlords will skip the intermediate step of writing code / designing circuits / creating proofs / etc. will be dismissed as "not relevant to adding to shareholder value".
1. Caffeine
2. (intermediate steps skipped)
3. Waste (CO2 + ammonia)
4. Profit!
They shouldn't be calling coders bacteria. Plus, they forgot pizza!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Stay away from my precious!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
pedantic-much?
It was a clear, descriptive, polite and helpful nitpick, at least.
I, for one, welcome our caffiene metabolizing bacteria overlords...
from the spit-it-out-you-wee-bastard department
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Come on, Slashdot! Pseudomonas putida is not new! Chemists have been using it for the biochemical oxidation of aromatic compounds for decades. The CBB5 designator, as boring as it is, is the new species identifier.
"One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop." --Diderot
So how much heat can these little guys produce metabolizing caffeine? Because if it's substantial, you could feed them coffee grounds, and use the heat to power a coffee machine...
A hyphen is used to separate multiple adjectives when they modify the same noun.
Nitpick: in the phrase "fifteen-minute presentations", the words fifteen and minute are not adjectives that both modify "presentations". "Fifteen-minute", as a phrase, consists of two nouns functioning as a single adjectival phrase to describe yet another noun, "presentations". In construction, this is quite similar to an ablative absolute in Latin, although the lack of case in English nouns and the corresponding use of English words as multiple parts of speech makes the situation murky. Ask a linguist. Also, "fifteen minute presentations" is inherently ambiguous unless referring to 15 physically small presentations. One should use either "fifteen-minute presentations" or "fifteen one-minute presentations".
One might also point out that while the meaning of "newly described species" is unambiguous without the hyphen, its inclusion may assist the reader in quickly drawing the connection between the words, and thus be an appropriate stylistic device despite being grammatically unnecessary.
Oh, and it's your turn.
I think I "discovered" this bacterium years ago, he was named harold and worked right next to me...
multiple parts of speech makes the situation murky. Ask a linguist. Also, "fifteen minute
WOAH, wait... Stop-Right-There, buddy: What does the player of a linguine noodle strung instrument have to do with Language?!
Well fuck, first Small Pox, then Ebola, now this? Fucking fuck. THE END IS NEAR!!!
You can't handle the truth.
Softwarium Developerium?
They've found a whole species of future mathematicians, though probably not the best. If they survived on pure amphetamines we'd be on our way towards a mathematical revolution.
Eat sleep die
Okay, pal. Where did you come from? RIAA? MPAA? SGAE? Spit it! /. from inside. Definitely NOT a geek.
You are obviously somebody from the Other Side in an undercover job, trying to bomb
In a related note, I drink 2-3 espressos a day, just because I like the strong taste of the carefully roasted beans. And I'm not addicted at all: when I travel to non-coffee countries like England or Japan (we continental Europeans don't call that crap "coffee" but rather "mopping water"), I have no side effects at all: I just live without coffee for two or more weeks.
The U.S. was in the "no coffee" list a few years ago, but looks like some areas are finally discovering REAL coffee (i.e. espresso).
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
So that's where everybody throws their leftover coffee!
Thanks for correcting me. I should not have called them adjectives.
Also, "fifteen minute presentations" is inherently ambiguous unless referring to 15 physically small presentations.
Nitpick: this phrase is ambiguous even if it's referring to 15 physically small presentations. The author's intent and their actual wording are not always the same.
Maybe if I make this message short enough, there won't be anything in it to nitpick :).
There's a fine line between pointless pedantry and useful precision in language. To me this is just over the line on the side of useful precision, since it brings to light an ambiguity (see my example) that can be easily missed. Of course it's off topic, but I didn't feel like discussing a bacterium that lives on caffeine.
Bacterium living on caffeine, or Mac fanbois posing in Starbucks?
I see none.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Well, I don't have much experience with bacteria, but based on my experience with other life forms that live on caffeine... as Baldrick would say, "I have a cunning plan, milord."
We just need to get them hooked on powerpoint too.Then they'll spend half the day in meetings to decide
- whether the background should be #C0C0C0 or #C0C0C1,
- who's to blame for one string being 1 pixel shorter in the browser compared to some mockups done in Photoshop,
- why can't the application be ready by next week by just adding a little code to the HTML mockup. I mean, the important part is already done, right?
- why it absolutely needs JAXB to transform the data to XML and back between the data access layer and the GUI, because the boss just read that buzzword in some PR ragazine,
- whether 10 MB of animated graphics per page is almost enough, given that the boss's best buddy has a graphics design agency and is getting the contract for those graphics
- how to fix database performance, given that the IT department won't do either of (A) actually doing their job and tuning that database, or (B) allow someone else access to do it, and (C) has no room in the racks for extra hardware to fix it by brute force either
Etc.
Throw in a few "team building" meetings and the like, and next thing you know, they're needing overtime just to make up for all the time spent in those productivity-building meetings and have no more time or interest in reproducing :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
An evil mastermind could destroy the western world by making this infectious - every human with this in their gut will be unable to get the effects of caffiene because the bacteria will have used it all before it hits the bloodsteam.
I had to enable Java to read it.
I attend the University of Iowa and I'm surprised it's living off of caffeine in a flower bed. I would've thought it would have either been alcohol or alcohol-infused vomit. Although, those caffeine-infused beers are quite popular around here.
Just to be nitpickier . . . it's 'by accident', not 'on accident'.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I guess this means I'll have to start washing my coffee mug, after all.
Now it will make your post-digestion/kidney-processed coffee smell like ammonia.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fairly common to put coffee grounds in a rose bed as compost. But at some colleges I wouldn't be surprised to find bacteria in the bushes that live off anything that could be spilled from a ditched paper cup or soda can.
If this idea will help improve lives on the affected country then why not. Just consider the factor of what will be the effect and who will be affected.
1) These aren't new, they've prolly been around for about as long as the coffee bean, which might make them older than us.
2) Re: Quote from summary - Someone found them. They didn't find themselves. The sentence should begin with who did the doing. We call this the subject of the sentence.
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That made me curious. It seems (source) that "on is more prevalent under age 10, both on and by are common between the ages of 10 and 35, and by is overwhelmingly preferred by those over 35." That source also suggests "by accident" will die out and be replaced with "on accident". It mentions some other sources which call "on accident" an error. My impression is that those sources are older and haven't caught up to this change in our use of language. Saying "on accident" to someone who uses "by accident" exclusively is probably equivalent to saying "I'm on bed" instead of "I'm in bed" to me--it sounds wrong. But, if everyone else starts using it, it won't sound wrong to anyone after I'm dead.