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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		A new version of biology's tree of life
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:05
	Publish Date:		2016-06-07 19:00:00
	Description:		A new version of biology’s tree of life will likely make it into the science textbooks. Microbiologist Karthik Anantharaman of the University of California, Berkeley helped put together an updated version containing over one thousand newly discovered microscopic organisms. "Over the last 15 years, we have collected greater than a thousand genomes of organisms that have never been cultured or, say, studied in the lab." Narrator: The last big revolution of the tree of life took place about 30 years ago, when scientists declared 3 main categories of life. This included bacteria and archaea, which are single celled organisms, and eukaryote, which includes organisms like animals and plants. But despite this clarification, many microbes remained mysterious. "When you look at, say, all of these normal microbes that say we have discovered, we don’t know what about 50% of their genes do. Now imagine the potential that's there to understand what these guys can do and then harness that for the future. So be it helping us treat diseases, digest food better, looking at our own microbiome and harnessing its potential."
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