Do you know how many different kinds of microbes exist on Earth? It may sound like a silly question but please indulge me and try to come up with a number… ready for the answer…? I hate to disappoint you but… it turns out that we still do not know! For most of the twenty-first century, few biologists contested the view that plants and animals accounted for the majority of the planet’s diversity (Curtis et al. 2006). Their perspective on microbial diversity was deeply skewed by the fact that they only recognized the select few species capable of growing under…
in which, with respect to our name, we are as confused as you are
By Marybel Soto Gomez
Marybel is a graduate student in the Botany Department at the University of British Columbia. When she is not daydreaming about plant sex, you will probably find her trying to sequence their plastid genomes (for her Masters project), collecting them (for fun), tending to them (in her garden) or eating them (she's a vegetarian).