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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		The complexities of documenting every living organism
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:00
	Publish Date:		2016-06-21 19:00:00
	Description:		Nature always manages to surprise us, and the diversity of life is no exception. At the University of California, Berkeley, microbiologist Karthik Anantharaman recently helped construct biology’s new tree of life, but he also knows what scientists are up against when it comes to documenting every living organism. "Now with regard to finding more and more organisms that we didn’t think exist or we didn’t have a good understanding, I think it has to do with complexity of the environment. By complexity, I mean how many different organisms live in a particular environment at the same time and can thrive. Now when you look at something like, say, a human environment, it’s a relatively simple environment . There aren’t a lot of microbes that live on us. When you look at something like water, it’s a little more complex, but we can still understand it. And finally, the most complex environments are soils and sediments. There are thousands of microorganisms that are coexisting. There are a lot of extreme environments. But I think slowly but steadily, we are uncovering a lot of it."
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