Ribosomal RNA, the lens into life
- Daniel McDonald1,2,
- Zhenjiang Xu2,
- Embriette R. Hyde3 and
- Rob Knight3,4
- 1Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
- 2BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA
- 3Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
- 4Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
- Corresponding author: robknight{at}ucsd.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Our world is, to a first approximation, a microbial world—even our own lives are evolutionarily and molecularly linked to that which we cannot see. This “invisible” world contains nearly unfathomable molecular and genetic diversity. Throughout the 20th century, a metaphor of “war against disease” prevailed: Microbes were hunted under the guise of health and agriculture, the goal being the eradication of “pathogens” at a global scale. Microbes were considered at best a nuisance and at worst a threat: a target for technological solutions. Humanity invested heavily, with the broad support of the scientific community, in the advancement of weapons for the war against microbes. We sought out novel antibiotics and antimicrobials as our enemy mounted resistance.
However, despite the profile of microbial pathogens as sources of human suffering needing to be eradicated, the scientific mindset still had room to respect the unknown. The evidence of what we might miss were …
