The Genome Was Small. My Doubt Wasn't

I spent two weeks trying to convince myself that finding a genome this small meant something. Sukunaarchaeum—barely alive, barely fitting any rule we wrote in textbooks. I should have felt wonder. Instead, I felt tired. The sequence came up on my screen at 2:13 a.m. I stared at it, thinking about all the things it couldn’t do, and all the things I couldn’t do. My PI called it a breakthrough. I called it another night alone, re-reading protocols, wondering if I was just as stripped-down as this microbe—replicating, but not really living. I wish I could say the discovery made me feel like a scientist. Mostly, it made me feel small. #Science #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout