December 19, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Microbial Load and Diversity in Earth's Soil
The claim made by the 2016 paper of the
National Science Foundation paper is astounding.
If what they propose is true about the
number of species existing on this planet then it means that merely
one-thousandth of 1 percent of species has been identified so far.
This should not be surprising when you know
for a fact that just a gram of our backyard soil contains up to billion
organisms and the total number on Earth is more than 20 orders of magnitude
greater.
I will never forget the snippet from the
three-part television documentary that was written and presented by my hero
Richard Dawkins titled “The Genius of Charles Darwin”.
It was first broadcasted on the Channel 4
in August of 2008 that went on to win the Best TV Documentary Series Award of
the year 2008 at the British Broadcast Awards ceremony.
In the very final moments of the third
episode Dawkins is seen walking out of a single-floor house (which is
presumably his) after switching on the coffee maker into its backyard.
He picks up a forked shovel, digs out the crust
of upper soil with it, bends down, picks up a handful of soil in his delicate
right hand and then looking at the camera says:
“In this handful of soil there are about 25
billion bacteria.
That is four times the entire human
population of the planet.
We humans and the animals that we can actually
see are a tiny fraction of life on earth.
In the perspective of the universe, the
vastness of the universe and of geological time, we are insignificant.
Some people find the thought disturbing,
even frightening.
Like Darwin, I find the reality thrilling.”
Each of the documentaries that Dawkins has
made is unbelievingly captivating thanks to the perfectly braided tapestry of
beautifully written script, professional photography and editing and resounding
background score to sync with the mood of the script.
If the soil is teeming with life and
biodiversity of astounding proportions then what about the largest water bodies
on our planet, the oceans?
Here enters Craig Venter.
To seek out the microbial diversity Craig
Venter the maverick American biotechnologist, biochemist, geneticist and businessman
carried out an ocean exploration genome project now known as Global Ocean
Sampling Expedition or the GOS expedition.
Its primary goal was to assess the genetic
diversity of the marine microbial communities which means marine life
restricted to microbes.
It is very well known that a large
proportion of all life on Earth is found in its oceans.
How large that proportion is still unknown
for we still in dark about the number of life forms that exist both in the
planet overall and in the oceans.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment