Oremland Ronald S
U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Area, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
FEMS Microbes. 2021 Jul 31;2:xtab009. doi: 10.1093/femsmc/xtab009. eCollection 2021.
In research, sometimes sheer happenstance and serendipity make for an unexpected discovery. Once revealed and if interesting enough, such a finding and its follow-up investigations can lead to advances by others that leave its originators 'scooped' and mulling about what next to do with their unpublished data, specifically what journals could it still be published in and be perceived as original. This is what occurred with us nearly 40 years ago with regard to our follow-up observations of acetylene fermentation and led us to concoct a 'cock-and-bull' story. We hypothesized about a plausible role for acetylene metabolism in the primordial biogeochemistry of Earth and the possibility of acetylene serving as a key life-sustaining substrate for alien microbes dwelling in the orbs of the outer solar system. With the passage of time, advances were made in whole-genome sequencing coupled with major progress in bioinformatics. In parallel came the results of explorations of the outer solar system (i.e. the Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons). It now appears that these somewhat harebrained ideas of ours, arisen at first out of a sense of desperation, actually ring true in fact, and particularly well in song: 'Tell a tale of cock and bull, Of convincing detail full Tale tremendous, Heav'n defend us! What a tale of cock and bull!' .
在科研中，有时纯粹的偶然和意外会带来意想不到的发现。一旦发现且足够有趣，这样的发现及其后续研究可能会促使他人取得进展，从而让其最初的发现者被“抢先”，并思考如何处理自己未发表的数据，特别是这些数据还能在哪些期刊上发表并被视为原创。大约40年前，我们在对乙炔发酵的后续观察中就遇到了这种情况，这让我们编造了一个“荒诞不经的故事”。我们推测乙炔代谢在地球原始生物地球化学中可能扮演的合理角色，以及乙炔作为外太阳系天体中外星微生物关键生命维持底物的可能性。随着时间的推移，全基因组测序取得了进展，生物信息学也有了重大进步。与此同时，对外太阳系的探索（即卡西尼号土星及其卫星探测任务）也有了结果。现在看来，我们这些最初出于绝望而产生的有些异想天开的想法，实际上确实是有道理的，尤其是这句歌词：“讲一个荒诞不经的故事，充满令人信服的细节，故事精彩绝伦，上帝保佑我们！多么荒诞不经的故事！”
