WHAT is the difference between the bacteria around a deep-sea vent and those in the human body? Surprisingly little, according to a comparison of the genomes of non-pathogenic bacteria from deep-sea vents with those of human and animal bacterial pathogens.
Their evolutionary relationship suggests that animal pathogens came from the deep (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0700687104).
Life on the ocean floor may have provided bacteria with the survival strategies to cope with life as a pathogen, says Satoshi Nakagawa of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, whose team carried out the analysis.…
