Scientists Discover Completely New Organisms, New Addition To Tree Of Life

At this point, it is generally assumed that scientists have discovered every type of organism on the planet, with only varying differences in the genome. However, researchers in Australia have apparently discovered organisms so distinct, they can’t be placed in any of the phyla that exist. These organisms are basically a new addition to the tree of life.

The researchers published their findings on Nature Microbiology, where the details regarding their methods of sequencing DNA that revealed the new organisms are explained. The core of the findings revolved around the new technique called metagenomics, which was used to sequence nearly 8,000 species of microorganisms.

Not exactly anything earth-shaking, the results do indicate that new methods allow scientists to learn new things about matters that are largely considered understood. In the case of what the implications of these findings are, lead project researcher Gene Tyson notes how this increases the evolutionary diversity that scientists know of.

“The real value of these genomes is that many are evolutionarily distinct from previously recovered genomes,” Tyson explained. “They increase the evolutionary diversity spanned by both bacterial and archaeal genome trees by over 30 percent, and are the first representatives within 17 bacterial and three archaeal phyla.”

More to the point, microorganisms are incredibly difficult to study, Futurism reports. However, they have a huge impact on the world as a whole.

Practically every single living organism depends on microorganisms in order to survive, even microorganisms. Being able to understand them more fully enables scientists to create better methods of either utilizing useful bacteria or eliminating the harmful ones.

In addition, this new discovery could have a potential impact on the matter of drug-resistant strains. If the new method that these researchers used enabled them to discover entirely new types of organisms, it could also lead to the discovery of new drugs that could eliminate bad bacteria.