Either this is some official iso naming convention, or their department is like my office, where people invent their own arbitrary number formats to say #iamreallysmart. Do you really expect there to be 999 maximum random mystery ship goos? Lol
they mentioned in the article that its only to be named that until it gets a proper (probably latin) name. And that they had found "about 20" previously unidentified strands of DNA in it. So I imagine they registered it as ShipGoo001 through ShipGoo020 in their own computer system
That whole region the dirt is orange from the iron content rusting and the lake has been a dumping ground for iron mining tailings for the past couple centuries. It's not surprising in the slightest that something evolved which could consume iron.
Really? As a layperson, that surprises me. It seems like a perfect opportunity for citizen scientists and kids who can make discoveries right in their back yards!
My knowledge is out of date (I was in a microbiology PhD program starting in the early 2010s), but at that time, it was known that there are a whole lot out of micro-organisms out there, but many of them were probably difficult to grow as isolates in pure culture for a whole host of reasons. What people ended up doing is sequencing a ton of DNA from environmental isolates, and trying to assemble whole genomes from the 100-200 base pair sequenced DNA fragments that you would get out of a sequencer (which is challenging for a whole host of other reasons). Then, if you believed in the genome assemblies you got out of that process, you could compare those inferred genomes to known genomes, see how similar they are, guess at the metabolic pathways those organisms might possess, etc.
Not sure what the state of the field is now, and I don't really know too many specifics, because I never ended up studying too much in the way of microbial ecology. If you wanted to sequence a bunch of DNA out of environmental samples (pond water or something), you would probably search on google scholar for environmental DNA isolation to see what kind of kits people are using, and then you would probably get an Oxford Nanopore minION, make a sequencing library out of the extracted environmental DNA using their ligation sequencing kit, and then run that library on as many flow cells as you can afford (each flow cell costs ~$1000, and you sequence a library on each flow cell for 3 days to get as much sequencing data as you can). Oxford Nanopore presents a relatively low barrier to entry in comparison to the high-throughput sequencers used in academic, clinical, and Pharma settings, and it gives you sequencing reads potentially as long as the physical DNA fragments present in your sample, but it has a lower sequencing throughput in comparison to the big short-read sequencers. For this kind of metagenomic discovery work, you want as high a sequencing depth as possible, because an unknown organism might be at a low abundance in your sample compared to well-studied, common organisms, so you need more sequencing data to detect it.
Then you would run some genome assembly software (https://www.metagenomics.wiki/tools/assembly), and then look into comparing your assembled genomes to known environmental isolates, and annotate those genomes to get a sense of which enzymes are encoded by genes in the genome. That all sounds straightforward, but there are probably tons of different possible computational tools to consider.
You don't need to look for dirt either. Your stomach has more than a million different microorganisms that have not been discovered, mapped and documented.
I don't really know if its possible to go through life without harming life as small as that. There's a religion where they try, Jainism. They will literally avoid eating food that's stored overnight, because it has higher concentrations of microorganisms. But even they acknowledge its impossible to entirely avoid causing harm, and only seek to minimize it.
Assuming you’re not a haywire LLM, if you’re alive and posting here, you eat. If you eat, you’ve already internalized and practiced the notion that it’s acceptable to kill other life forms to stay alive.
The study of biology also serves to keep people alive; our modern practice of medicine evolved from the understanding gained by scientists, studying in the name of science.
It was obviously a goop before he did that. Do you think there was a chance the goop would leap up like the thing? He was probably seeing if it was oil
> mysterious life form on a docked ship
> black goo
Hey, I've watched this X-Files episode before!
Exactly what I was thinking, S3 E15 and 16
This also gave me real xfiles vibes.
https://alaskapublic.org/news/2024-03-08/feds-investigate-la...
>ShipGoo001
Either this is some official iso naming convention, or their department is like my office, where people invent their own arbitrary number formats to say #iamreallysmart. Do you really expect there to be 999 maximum random mystery ship goos? Lol
they mentioned in the article that its only to be named that until it gets a proper (probably latin) name. And that they had found "about 20" previously unidentified strands of DNA in it. So I imagine they registered it as ShipGoo001 through ShipGoo020 in their own computer system
It's basically no extra investment to add an extra zero or two, and it might avoid a hassle later down the line.
I think you're taking it too seriously. I think the name is clearly in tongue-in-cheek territory.
It could be serious to the mariner's wallet if these mystery critters ate up the serviceability of critical boat parts. ;@)
And the off-by-one missed opportunity to start at 000. ;)
You're underestimating Cleveland if you think this is their first goo rodeo.
Clearly should have been called MissingNo.
We've been at this science thing for nearly 500 years now, and we're only up to ship goo #1. What are the chances we're going to need 4 digits?
Well, for one, we've only recently started to look at the bottom of ships
Since it is a different lifeform, maybe it has 8 arms and is octal based and numbered in a different scheme, branching out like:
ShipGoo001.003.006.177.004.001.343
My first thought is that it's some form of bryozoan. Seems like most mysterious water located goo is usually that.
> It’s possible ShipGoo001 is carbon-based…
I'd go so far as to say it's likely, heh.
I'd go as far as to say it is carbon-based.
>they cracked cell membranes
>they found DNA
Which by the way are carbon-based chemicals.
https://archive.ph/TXbt1
Did the St. Clair river blob[1] come alive and make its way to Cleveland?
[1]https://petrolialambtonindependent.ca/2025/02/14/the-end-of-...
It's the Venom symbiote
Strong "The Swarm" vibes as well here...
Ominous Plot Twist:
> It’s not some boat-feasting substance like whatever had been eating away at steel pilings in Duluth Harbor a number of years ago
That whole region the dirt is orange from the iron content rusting and the lake has been a dumping ground for iron mining tailings for the past couple centuries. It's not surprising in the slightest that something evolved which could consume iron.
More ominous:
> It’s not some boat-feasting life form like whatever had been eating away at steel pilings in Duluth Harbor a number of years ago
You can pick up a handful of dirt and there's microorganisms in there that are undiscovered.
I was hoping this was more of a macro organism.
Really? As a layperson, that surprises me. It seems like a perfect opportunity for citizen scientists and kids who can make discoveries right in their back yards!
Where might I learn more?
My knowledge is out of date (I was in a microbiology PhD program starting in the early 2010s), but at that time, it was known that there are a whole lot out of micro-organisms out there, but many of them were probably difficult to grow as isolates in pure culture for a whole host of reasons. What people ended up doing is sequencing a ton of DNA from environmental isolates, and trying to assemble whole genomes from the 100-200 base pair sequenced DNA fragments that you would get out of a sequencer (which is challenging for a whole host of other reasons). Then, if you believed in the genome assemblies you got out of that process, you could compare those inferred genomes to known genomes, see how similar they are, guess at the metabolic pathways those organisms might possess, etc.
Not sure what the state of the field is now, and I don't really know too many specifics, because I never ended up studying too much in the way of microbial ecology. If you wanted to sequence a bunch of DNA out of environmental samples (pond water or something), you would probably search on google scholar for environmental DNA isolation to see what kind of kits people are using, and then you would probably get an Oxford Nanopore minION, make a sequencing library out of the extracted environmental DNA using their ligation sequencing kit, and then run that library on as many flow cells as you can afford (each flow cell costs ~$1000, and you sequence a library on each flow cell for 3 days to get as much sequencing data as you can). Oxford Nanopore presents a relatively low barrier to entry in comparison to the high-throughput sequencers used in academic, clinical, and Pharma settings, and it gives you sequencing reads potentially as long as the physical DNA fragments present in your sample, but it has a lower sequencing throughput in comparison to the big short-read sequencers. For this kind of metagenomic discovery work, you want as high a sequencing depth as possible, because an unknown organism might be at a low abundance in your sample compared to well-studied, common organisms, so you need more sequencing data to detect it.
Then you would run some genome assembly software (https://www.metagenomics.wiki/tools/assembly), and then look into comparing your assembled genomes to known environmental isolates, and annotate those genomes to get a sense of which enzymes are encoded by genes in the genome. That all sounds straightforward, but there are probably tons of different possible computational tools to consider.
> Where might I learn more?
the backyard ;)
Google turns up plenty of hits.
https://www.sciencealert.com/life-deep-beneath-the-soil-domi...
Not fishing for an upvote, but you might like this Kurzgesagt video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6xJq8NguY
> Where might I learn more
In the fridge in company's kitchen ?
You don't need to look for dirt either. Your stomach has more than a million different microorganisms that have not been discovered, mapped and documented.
There is a documentary about it on https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/
Or this one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1031280/
Even better the last segment of that one (specifically an aquatic organism): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092796/
Could it be the hard to get discovery of Random life emerging from the waters?
I thought Random emerged from Arthur Dent.
was the black goo different than the sparkly green goo?
I assume that they have naming rights. ShipGoo001 is somewhat playful, but even better would be something like "ICan'tBelieveIt'sNotTar!",
[and once I am daydreaming, Let's have the leading I as a roman numeral - CIIXVICan'tBelieve...]
And, preemptively: 1. People have started "not-a-fork"ing git repos, a la LumoSQL. 2. Fedora purposely uses special characters in their release names.
Reddit in the 10s would have named it GooeyMcGooface.
[dead]
"ShipGoo001 is believed to be a single cell organism" - It was found on a University of Minnesota Duluth research ship.
That gives us the right to poke, prod and kill in the name of science?
I don't really know if its possible to go through life without harming life as small as that. There's a religion where they try, Jainism. They will literally avoid eating food that's stored overnight, because it has higher concentrations of microorganisms. But even they acknowledge its impossible to entirely avoid causing harm, and only seek to minimize it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
Assuming you’re not a haywire LLM, if you’re alive and posting here, you eat. If you eat, you’ve already internalized and practiced the notion that it’s acceptable to kill other life forms to stay alive.
The study of biology also serves to keep people alive; our modern practice of medicine evolved from the understanding gained by scientists, studying in the name of science.
It's a microbial goop, as far as ethics go I'm not sure you can really do better. Eating plants is probably more ethically questionable
The point is the scientist didn't know it was until after blowtorching it.
And this is how the hyper-intelligent race of ShipGoo0001 beings decided humans were an existential threat.
I'm just glad they got it before it bit anyone's arms off
It was obviously a goop before he did that. Do you think there was a chance the goop would leap up like the thing? He was probably seeing if it was oil
Won't someone think of the prokaryotes!
https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/ancestors