Читать книгу The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life - David Quammen, David Quammen - Страница 30

Ralph Wolfe told me the same story, with some elaboration, thirty-nine years later when I called on him in Urbana. By then, he was an emeritus professor of microbiology, ninety-three years old, a frail and slender gentleman with a quick smile, still maintaining his office and coming to it, as though retirement were not an entirely satisfying option. On the wall behind his desk hung a replica of Alessandro Volta’s pistola, a gunlike device invented by Volta in the late 1770s for testing the flammability of swamp gases, including methane. On the desk itself were papers and books and a computer.

Woese’s lab back in the day had been in Morrill Hall, on South Goodwin Avenue, and Wolfe’s was in an adjacent building, connected by a walkway. Woese would occasionally trundle over on various business. “He came down the hall and happened to see me,” Wolfe recalled, “and says, ‘Wolfe, these things aren’t even bacteria!’” Wolfe laughed gently and, for my benefit, continued reenacting the scene.

“‘Of course they are, Carl.’” They look like bacteria in the microscope, Wolfe had told him. But Woese wasn’t using a microscope. He never did. He was using ribosomal RNA fingerprints.

“‘Well, they’re not related to anything I’ve seen.’” Coming back to the present, Wolfe said: “That was the pivotal statement that changed everything.”