The planet now harbors a strain of the famous bacterium Escherichia coli (e. coli) that can chew up plants and excrete biodiesel.

FORBES: Building A Better Biofuel Bug

To prove it worked, he started with a strain of the E. coli bacterium that produced small quantities of lycopene, the pigment that makes tomatoes red.

FORBES: Putting Evolution to Work

The remainder of any given E. coli bacterium's genome is drawn from a pool of about 20, 000 other genes that the organisms swap with gay abandon.

ECONOMIST: Inhuman genomes

In 2011, Clarrie played a key role in The Archers' 60th anniversary year when she was found to be responsible for an outbreak of the bacterium E.coli.

BBC: The Archers to bring back original Clarrie Grundy

The original viruses are parasites on a bacterium called E. coli (much favoured by geneticists, and notorious in the wider world because some strains of it can cause food poisoning).

ECONOMIST: Viral evolution