Comments on: Where There's Smoke, There's Klebsiella? http://theartfulamoeba.com/2010/03/18/where-theres-smoke-theres-klebsiella/ A blog about the weird wonderfulness of life on Earth Fri, 07 Mar 2014 01:10:06 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.31 By: Jennifer Frazer http://theartfulamoeba.com/2010/03/18/where-theres-smoke-theres-klebsiella/comment-page-1/#comment-228 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:39:38 +0000 http://frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com/?p=2733#comment-228 I guess I’ve always thought that an individual bacteria can have a life, meaning it is “born” as the product of cell division and eventually perishes due to unfavorable environmental conditions or consumption by another organism (or maybe even just being worn out or parasitized if it hasn’t had bacterial sex lately?). But perhaps you’re right — since an individual bacterium and its progeny can divide many times before they are starved or eaten, maybe that’s an immortality of sorts. Did the life of the first bacterium that divided end when it divided? Or did it carry on as two lives? Certainly, bacterial lives are not like the lives of vertebrates, and English is a peculiar language. : ) I hope you can forgive/enjoy my liberties with it.

]]> By: Nathan Myers http://theartfulamoeba.com/2010/03/18/where-theres-smoke-theres-klebsiella/comment-page-1/#comment-227 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:25:11 +0000 http://frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com/?p=2733#comment-227 I wonder how one would meaningfully define the “entire life” of a microbe.

I’m not criticizing. I consider it a wondrous quality of English, and probably any natural language, that we can make statements that (as far as I can discern) utterly collapse under analysis, yet everyone takes your meaning perfectly anyhow.

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