Bacteria can travel thousands of miles through the air on their own

The investigation was focused on “molecular memories” that are stored in bacterial DNA, providing a record of when the bacteria encountered viruses. The scientists expected that bacteria collected in hot springs thousands of miles apart would have very different memories of virus encounters, even though they were the same species. “What we found, however, is that there were plenty of shared memories – identical pieces of viral DNA stored in the same order in the DNA of bacteria from distant hot springs,” explained Professor Severinov.

Source: www.earth.com