Summer Mirth

by Elio
 

From a presentation at a 'Comparative Mi­cro­bial Genomics Workshop', attri­but­ed to W.P. Hanage. Source

A guy walks at night on a beach in California and stubs his toe against an old bottle, which breaks and releases a genie. "I’ll grant you one wish, oh Master," says the genie.
 

The man replies, "Well, I'd dearly love to go to Hawaii but I hate both airplanes and ships, so would you build me a highway from here to there?" The genie thinks for a moment, then replies, "Indeed, I said you could have one wish, but this one seems nearly impossible. Could you ask for something easier?"
 

The man, being a microbiological sort, says, "OK, can you then tell me what is a species?"
 

The genie pauses, then answers, “Do you want it two lanes or four?”
 

For greater enlightenment, click here or here.
 

 
 

 
 

Comments

[Mark O. Martin]

My former thesis advisor, Sharon Long, told a great story about this kind of thing. She had been performing transposon mutagenesis (while she was a postdoc with Fred Ausubel at Harvard) on Rhizobium meliloti (now Sinorhizobium meliloti). Sharon isolated a transposon mutant incapable of forming root nodules on alfalfa.

A Harvard professor asked her how she knew that the mutant was Rhizobium. Sharon replied that it has the appropriate antibiotic resistance markers. The questioner pointed out that the *definition* of Rhizobium meliloti included the ability to nodulate alfalfa roots. The mutant did not. So was it still Rhizobium meliloti??!!

That story was the first time I became uneasy with the species concept among prokaryotes. It wasn't the last!