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From: royt@gitpyr.UUCP (Roy M. Turner)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ellison and TERMINATOR
Message-ID: <499@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Jun-85 20:35:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.499
Posted: Thu Jun 27 20:35:23 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Jun-85 23:41:59 EDT
References: <2337@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: royt@gitpyr.UUCP (Roy M. Turner)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 51
Summary: 

In article <2337@topaz.ARPA> CARTER@RUTGERS.ARPA writes:
>From: _Bob 
>
>
>    From: mtgzz!leeper at topaz.arpa (m.r.leeper)
>    Sorry, the idea of a creature that lays its eggs in other creatures
>    and uses them distructively to incubate them was used long ago by a
>    fellow named E. Coli.  Mr. Coli has been using this idea for
>    millions of years now.  Admittedly he is not an alien, but you don't
>    see him every day.
>
>Mr. Coli?  With a first name like Escherina?  E. Coli is a not only a
>public-spirited symbiote instead of a parasite, but is a plant of the
>class schizomycetes, and couldn't lay an egg if life depended on it.
>
>She is going to have a word with one of her Mexican cousins about the
>next time you drink the water in Tijuana.
>
>_B



Ahem.  Perhaps it is time for the above folks to go out and purchase a nice
text on microbiology.  E. coli is the name of (I believe) three organisms.
The one that tourists dread is a normal symbiote of our GI tract, certainly
cannot lay eggs, and *isn't* a plant--it's a bacteria, and has been polishing
its ways for many millions of years.  There is another E. coli that is
a yeast, I think--maybe that's the Schizomycete?--and it wouldn't be any
more of an egg-layer than would S. cerivisiae, the one that is used for making
breads and beer...hmmm, egg in your beer? :-)

The only other E. coli that I know of is Entamoeba coli, an amoeba that also 
finds it damn difficult to lay eggs, as that is several million years up the
evolutionary tree from where it sits...it may encyst, I don't remember.

There may be more E. coli's, since at the time when I was studying micro the
names of the organisms were mutating rapidly.

Roy

P.S.:  Yes, the yeast and the bacteria *both* have the first name Escherichia;
   ain't taxonomy great? :-)
-- 
The above opinions aren't necessarily those of etc, etc...but they
should be!!

Roy Turner
(a transplanted Kentucky hillbilly)
School of Information and Computer Science
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!royt