What I really mean by 'new' is that it's been in the news lately, in fact
so recently that some of our tools won't pick up the most recent
material. The web site "Bugs in the News" has a press relese
("New News about an Old Bug"), there's a
DOE
press release ("Microorganisms's genetic information yields
scientific surprises, potential biotech applications"), Nature has a
2-page article in the
26 September issue (pp299-300), and Science was the location of
the publication on 23 August of Bult et al. "Complete Genome Sequence of the Methanogenic Archaeon,
Methanococcus jannaschii". This is very big news. Says the
Nature article:
Bult et al. has given us, for the first time, the complete genetic
complement of an autotroph: an organizsm that is able to synthesize all
its required biomolecules from inorganic compounds. It is at once
sobering and exhilarating to realize that among the 1,738 M.
jannaschii genes is all the genetic information that is both
necessary and sufficient for completely independent cellular
life.
(Michael W. Gray, in Nature 383:300)