Maurice Panisset, published a book titled A New Bacteriology, making the case that all bacteria on Earth constitute a single interconnected entity, a single species—no, wait, maybe even a single individual creature—through which genes from all the variously named “species” flow relatively freely, by horizontal gene transfer, for use where needed. This freedom of transfer, this universal interchangeability of parts, gives the bacterial entity “a huge available gene pool,” Sonea
