Able to mutate, to adapt, to use host cell mechanisms to reproduce themselves with astounding rapidity, unpredictable, viruses sometimes seem to have presented humanity with a veritable challenge. Nearly 100 years after the terrifying Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that claimed over 25 million victims around the world, research teams still attempt to understand how this virus was able to attain such a huge magnitude.

Bacteria are our most distant known ancestors, from more than 3.5 billion years back, can you imagine! In Australia, geologists are searching to locate fossils of these distant relatives, the cyanobacteria, on rock fragments. Other teams working in Antarctica have discovered colonies of bacteria that prosper in temperatures of minus 68°C, in conditions that resemble those found on Mars. And so bacteria have been placed on a meteorite attached to a satellite and sent off into space in an attempt to understand how life began.