Most scientists describe biodiversity in terms of the number of species that have been discovered and described in scientific journals. roughly 1.8 million species have been described, although most scientists think there could be as many as 50 million species or more currently living on earth. however, in the video, craig venter seems more interested in the total number of discovered genes (he gives a total number of 20 million genes in the video) than the total number of discovered species. why is that?
a. for recombinant dna technology or for the creation of synthetic life, only the gene that produces a particular desired product is needed, and not the entire organism that carried the gene.
b. identifying species takes too much time, and the rules state that new species must be identified and described in a scientific journal before their genes can be studied.
c. he is not interested in entire organisms, since the entire genome of each one must be sequenced in order to find anything useful.
d. the microbes that the team is collecting are actually all the same species, but they each carry a unique set of genes.