What the hell is it then?
by digby
This story from last week will make you feel young. Why? It will remind you of all those times you were stoned in college and started thinking that there might actually be a totally different universe living under your thumbnail and that we might be a universe living under the thumbnail of something else and they might be .... you get the picture. At that point you probably decided it was time for another Oreo. But this is for real:
Have you ever been on the subway and seen something that you did not quite recognize, something mysteriously unidentifiable?
Well, there is a good chance scientists do not know what it is either.
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.
It's actually not a surprise since only a few thousand of the world's genomes have been mapped.
Still, what the hell are they? ;)
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