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

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

As someone who studies both bacterial and multicellular genomes, I'd hold off the "redundancy and clutter" verdicts until we actually have much idea how all the information needed to make multicellarity work is fitted into the genome.

I'm not denying that Peligibacter ubique doesn't appear to be very good at what it does, but it's not going to be posting to LJ anytime soon :-).