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Tuesday, 25 June 2013

Thing To Do Today: sporulate.

I realise that sporulating (that is, giving off spores) sounds an extremely difficult thing to do unless you're a mushroom, a moss, an alga, a protozoan, a bacterium or a fern:

 File:Tree Fern Spores.jpg
Photo of fern spores by Anca Mosoiu

but sporulate is such a splendidly nasty and vivid word that I really think we ought to try.

File:Agaricus bisporus spores SEM 3.jpg
Spores of the mushroom Agaricus bisporus. Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility, Dartmouth College

How can we do it?

Well, given that only one in ten of the cells in a human body is actually, well, human, the rest being viruses or bacteria or fungi, then it turns out that sporulating isn't that difficult after, all.

All we have to do is sneeze.

Thing To Do Today: sporulate. This word comes from spore, of course, which comes from the Greek word speirein, which means to sow.

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