Why study those weird bacteria with bizarre endomembranes? Why would we care? Well, in addition to their intrinsic interest and beauty, as well as their potential evolutionary link with our own kind of cells, there is an important part of research which is implied by its name. It is "research", we don't know what we are going to find, we don't know what will be interesting, relevant or useful, but that is the reality of basic research. It is always worth reminding us that there will not be any applied research without basic research. Everything else is coming from basic research. A nice call in favor of basic research from the NIH director Francis Collins has just been published in Science. Let's hope it will be heard, and not only in the states!
