The basic knowledge gained from studies of these organisms impacts all areas of agriculture and extends into animal and human health.
Add extra copies of them to these organisms' chromosomes, or force the existing copies to produce more protein than normal, and life is prolonged.
Because exposure to very few norovirus particles can result in infection, these organisms spread rapidly through confined communities such as dormitories, prisons and nursing homes.
These organisms, which have fundamentally different metabolisms to normal microbes, are found in hydrothermal vents on the deep-ocean floor and in rocks and springs hundreds of metres below the surface of the Earth.
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But a grassroots project called the Bioweathermap was launched a year ago to discover and track the worldwide movements of these organisms using high-speed DNA sequencing of the biological residue on paper currency, one of the most oft-handled and well-traveled of objects.
For these organisms, getting down from a cloud may be more of an ordeal than getting up: spore-releasing fungi tend to shed spores at the times of day and year when thermals are most likely, and bacteria are so small and light that the slightest puff of wind can send them flying.
It's only been the last 10 years that there's been a growing appreciation, which has really skyrocketed the last five years, for the fact that these organisms may actually confer health benefits, and so the entities who have commercialized probiotics are now going back and testing whether or not there are benefits to those commercially available probiotics.
The drugs that treat these resistant organisms, however, are harsh.
The genes for vaults are almost the same among all these different organisms a good indication to evolutionary biologists that whatever vaults do, it is crucial for the cell.
These micro-organisms are pumped into the oily water 24-hours a day and it is hoped that in a year all of the oil will have been eaten.
Without these single-cell organisms we would not, for example, have an atmosphere that supports human life or digest food efficiently.
If you think about the Cambrian explosion of body plans or the rise of mammals, these were not the organisms that were best suited for their environments--they were really wild experiments in different sorts of space and possibilities.
All the hip-cool scientists these days are enslaving living organisms to do their bidding.
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But these are rare and specialized niche organisms, what biologists call "extremophiles, " because they love extreme environmental conditions.
These threats include insects, disease organisms, herbicides and environmental stresses.
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These form the basis of a typical community of organisms made up of cold corals, sponges and the like.
No doubt the virus-writers and hackers will find new ways to attack these novel defence mechanisms, just as micro-organisms can evolve their way around immune responses.
These are highly complicated pieces of equipment almost as complicated as living organisms.
Darwin himself was intrigued by this phenomenon, in which different groups of organisms independently evolve similar solutions to similar problems, whether these solutions are teeth, eyes, brains, ecosystems or societies.
If and when these enzymes are perfected, the way will be open to make simple organisms engineered to carry the new base pair.
Nor is Phoenix equipped to detect micro-organisms, though it will be able to sniff out organic molecules if these are around, and that will be a tantalising clue.
In most cases it takes these bags two years to break down, allowing even small fragments to be consumed by micro-organisms who are able to access the carbon and hydrogen.
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