Imagine that there are two types of genetic “thing” that l̵i̵v̵e̵ exist on the planet:
- Life (e.g. archaea, bacteria, eukaryotes, cats)
- Viruses (e.g. coronavirus, HIV)
You could maybe add a third category called plasmids, which are little bits of genetic information that archaea and bacteria pass back and forth between each other. But that’s debatable since viruses replicate in a way that is quite different than DNA sharing, as all of humanity is painfully aware of right now.
Well, to this very brief list, we can possibly (maybe?) add a third:
- Borg
In the Star Trek series, the Borg were a hive mind species which could assimilate different organisms into a collective. The (new) Borg are large snippets of archaeal DNA which appear to do something similar among Methanoperedens, a species of archaea which eats methane in oxygen-free conditions. These Borg are large chunks of DNA that don’t appear to be viruses that have some kind of symbiotic relationship to the methane-eating archaea.
Where do they come from? Well, no one knows since they’ve just been discovered. The discoverers have some ideas about what they might mean though.
- They could be ginormous plasmids or viruses, the biggest by orders of magnitude yet discovered. This would significantly revise how much genetic material can be exchanged.
- They could be auxileary chromosomes that are carried outside an organism. Imagine if your body put some of its DNA in a carry on bag — this could have benefits like reducing the energy needed for DNA replication. In computer terms, the DNA in your body would be like your RAM, while the DNA in the Borg could be more like a USB flash drive, inserted only when needed.
- Or, they could be an evolutionary snapshot of the evolution of archaea (small single-celled organisms) to eukaryotes (multi-celled organisms like us). The Borg could be what our own chromosomes looked like if we went back billions of years ago.
Obviously some chapter of a biology book is going to be revised based on this discovery. What makes them relevant is this: they are related to methane oxidization. You may have heard of methane — it is 25 times more effective at heating the Earth than CO2. The discovery of the Borg raise the prospect that we could use them to supercharge methane oxidization, which could prevent methane from leaving key sources (perhaps methane clathrates). This could open a new front in the fight against climate change — genetic engineering to knock out a few methane sources. This could counteract some of the effects of increasing CO2 emissions.
Long story short, Borg are important for a whole host of reasons. Link to the preprint here.
