Hi Mark

Good point. There are plenty of bacteria and like which we don't know about in the ocean and which researchers are actively searching out - and no reported cases of exotic brain-eating diseases or similar horrors. Our worst microbial enemies have been ones closest to us - from similar species or similar metabolisms, or even our own troop of bugs but mutated and/or wrongly relocated.

Pelagibacter is very interesting - here's a link...

Abstract on Pelagibacter research

...has a very tiny genome, just 1308506 bp (some 1354 genes) and apparently stripped back with no "junk DNA". Interesting to compare to the former "largest bacterium" which had x25 our own amount of DNA - it's own genome in 85,000 copies distributed over its "gigantic" bulk. What I'd really like to know is if the putative nanobes have shorter DNA sequences - if they use it at all...

Adam