"It would be a little disappointing if we didn't even find bacteria in our own solar system. I would be rather surprised to find what I would describe as large, morphologically complex life. ...It only arose once on earth. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's improbable... but it does raise some interesting questions about why, and... I think we can apply principles to it, and those principles effectively are why do bacteria and , as assistive groups to the bacteria... They're biochemically very complex. They're genetically very complex. They're kind of structured in a different way where they have large, complex metagenomes, but... I doubt very much that we'll ever find anything of the [morphological] level of complexity of a flea, composed of bacterial cells."
Nick Lane

January 1, 1970

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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nick_Lane