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Mapping the world’s diversity, one cell at a time

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Mapping the world’s diversity, one cell at a time

‘One thing we do know’ says Winthrop Professor Andrew Whiteley, ‘is that if you removed all microbes from planet earth all other life would cease to exist.’

He’s sitting on a bench in the Taxonomic Gardens at the University of Western Australia, pointing to the trees assembled before him and saying that they’re not the only ones responsible for oxygenating the atmosphere.

He says that originally it was microbes that did that for the planet. The little cells that look like blobs of jelly oxygenated the atmosphere and that allowed the conditions for the creation of life as we know it.

‘Current estimates have numbers of microbial species on planet earth as at least 10 million, and these [estimates] go up and up every six to eight months,’ he says.

‘The numbers are even bigger than that, so for example, on planet earth, the number of microbial cells is thought to be 10^30.

‘To put that in context, the number of stars in the known universe is 10^20, so there’s ten orders of magnitude more bacterial cells on planet earth than there are stars in the known universe.’

Three species of microbe Microbe constellation

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Broadcast 
Perth, Science and Technology, Environment, Viticulture, Microbiology
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