At last we come to the fifth winning question about Microcosm, from Ceph. Once again, thanks to the ~240 people who entered the contest. I hope my answers to these five questions give you a sense of what my book’s about and why I’m so excited by this little germ. If you want to learn more about it, and about life, pick up a copy.

Ceph asks,

What is your favorite thing that has been done to E. coli (making it glow, smell like bananas, etc)?

My answer below…

E. coli has the odd honor of being the most-hacked organism on Earth. About forty years ago, scientists started figuring out how to move genes from other species into E. coli.