- Viruses
- if all viruses on earth laid end to end they'd stretch for 100,000,000 light years (not sure if I believe this one)
- 8% our genome is thought to be comprised of defunct viral DNA
- viral lysis in surface waters kill off 20-40% of oceanic prokaryotes daily
- more bacteria in the oceans (10^28) than there are stars in the universe
- 400 g of botulism toxin (produced by Clostridium botulinum) could wipe out all humans on the planet
- Gut bacteria
- gut flora genes outnumber our gene set by 100 fold (same thing I had noted in an earlier post)
- there are more bacteria in the gut than total number of people who have ever lived
- human excrete their weight in faecal bacteria every year
- you have ~1 kg bacteria in your gut
This led me to another interesting website that attempts to catalogue crazy information like these: http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/default.aspx
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