Discover Your Microbe Personality: Which Microbe Are You?

Pelagibacter ubique You are…
Pelagibacter ubique!

Oh la la! You are Pelagibacter ubique, whose nickname is SAR-11!

SAR-11 has a banana shape and is tiny, even for a microbe, but it is the most abundant organism in the ocean and its combined weight exceeds that of all the marine fish in the world! Like you, this microbe is a bit disorganized. Its cell contents aren’t neatly packaged into organelles, in much the same way that your socks never manage to find their way into a drawer!

But, you can both brag about packing lightly — SAR-11 boasts having the smallest genome of any free-living organism! Also, this microbe is just as unlikely as you are to “hold its breath” for very long because it requires oxygen to survive.

Photo credit: Kehau Manoi; C-MORE University of Hawai‘i. Under guidance of Megan Huggett and Michael Rappé. (Click on it to see a larger version in a new window.)