...but don't worry, all they assimilate is DNA from other organisms. While studying environmental DNA, scientists found long strands of DNA that contained genes from microbes and other stuff. They were looking for viruses.
The borg are about a million base pairs long and exist outside cells. They might tell us something about viral evolution.
But they're also associated with microbes that oxidize methane, and could be involved in that process...and we really need microbes that oxidize methane.
Unfortunately, they can't be studied in the lab because without other organisms they can't do their thing. Which means, are they real or just some kind of bizarre contamination?
For that matter, does it matter what they are. If we can work out how to grow their hosts, then maybe we'll find out...and it might help us come up with ways to get methane out of the atmosphere. Like, say, introducing these bacteria to the manure heaps at dairy farms...
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