Besides, it has a cool name

[redbird]

The genome of a very common bacterium has been sequenced, and it has only 1354 genes, and apparently none of the redundancy or clutter of the human genome. Pelagibacter ubique doesn't have the smallest genome known, but the smaller ones sequenced are all from obligate parasites. P. ubique floats in the ocean--everywhere in the ocean--billions of billions of individuals.

ETA: That name translates as "Ubiquitous ocean bacterium", if that counts as "translation".

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Steve Giovannoni, lead scientist on the sequencing project, is somebody I know - our program has funded a lot of his work, although not this particular project. He and his lab (http://mcb.science.oregonstate.edu/giovannoni/) are very cool.

He's also a signator to Project Steve (http://www.(talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/), which is even cooler...)