CARL WOESECORTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
The man best known for determining that archaea—an ancient type of microbe that often lives in extreme environments—should be classified in their own domain in the evolutionary tree, died in his home on Sunday (December 30). Through his work and teachings, Woese advocated for the importance of studying microbes, including those that inhabit the human body.
“It’s clear to me that if you wiped all multicellular life-forms off the face of the earth, microbial life might shift a tiny bit,” Woese told The New York Times in a 1996 interview. “If microbial life were to disappear, that would be it—instant death for the planet.”
Woese made his discoveries in the 1970s by analyzing ribosomal RNA rather than looking for physical traits. He found sequences that ...
