Researchers have identified a brand-new phylum (that’s phylum not species) in the drain of a hospital sink:
Now some researchers have managed to generate a genome sequence from a single bacterium, and they have used this technique to scan for new species in a biofilm isolated from a hospital sink. The results include the genome of a previously unrecognized phylum of bacteria, called TM6, that appears to be an obligate symbiote, perhaps living inside another cell found in the biofilm.
The hospital as Petri dish. I don’t know how much solace to take from the fact that the hospital in question appears to have been in Germany.
