A squad of scientists discover a macroscopic species of bacterium living in the water off Guadeloupe in the Caribbean , shifting the scales of how bighearted we thought bacteria could be . The newly discover specie is named Thiomargarita ( sulfur pearl ) magnifica , and it is so large that its single cells are seeable to the raw eye .
Besides its superlative size of it , T. magnifica shows signs of increase complexness in bacteria . Instead of its desoxyribonucleic acid just float around in the jail cell , its transmitted info is tucked away within tissue layer - bound structures , as ours is . A full analysis of the fresh described bacteria ispublishedtoday in Science .
“ The bacteria that we discovered has around the shape and size of it of an eyelash , and yet it is a single bacterial cell , ” state study lead author Jean - Marie Volland , a marine biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems , in a press conference Monday .
T. magnifica filaments next to a dime for scale.Gif: Tomas Tyml
“ These bacterium are about 5,000 time larger than most bacteria , ” Volland added . “ To put things into linear perspective , it is the equivalent weight for us humans to encounter another human who would be as tall as Mount Everest . ”
The jumbo bacteria was first get hold in 2009 in the marine mangrove swamp of Guadeloupe , an island in the Lesser Antilles , by study co - author Olivier Gros , a life scientist at the Université des Antilles . T. magnifica appear to be translucent , centimeter - long strings adhere to decay leaf topic in the H2O . At first , Gros think the white filaments were eukaryotes , due to their size .
But take some samples back to the lab and putting them under a microscope revealed that they had no nuclei or mitochondria — typical components of eucaryotic cells . Instead Gros found sulfur granule at heart ; “ it looked more like a large filamentous sulfur - oxidizing bacterium , with the difference that it did not seem to be multicellular , ” Gros said in the press group discussion .
T. magnifica’s habitat: a marine mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe.Photo: Pierre Yves Pascal
T. magnifica ’s genetic selective information is stored in a series of vesicles call in pepins , which are string along along the animate being ’s length . In a relatedPerspectives article , Petra Anne Levin , a microbic life scientist at Washington University in St. Louis , who is unaffiliated with the new inquiry , say that it ’s a closed book how a bacterium as heavy as T. magnifica manages to organise its growth and development .
The research squad sequence and analyzed the genome of T. magnifica and revealed how the bacterium reproduces : one death of the elongated bacteria constricts , splitting the T. magnifica cell in two . The genomic analysis show that the bacterium has a lengthy genome — about 12 million base pairs , around twice the duration of some related bacterial genomes .
The true home ground kitchen range of T. magnifica is unknown . So far , it ’s only been find in a span of sites in Guadeloupe ’s Rhizophora mangle swampland . Its accurate theatrical role in the ecosystem is still uncertain .
A T. magnifica filament, with apparent budding at its tip.Image: Jean-Marie Volland
“ Mangroves and their microbiomes are important ecosystem for carbon cycling , ” said study co - source Tanja Woyke , a geneticist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ’s Joint Genome Institute , in alaboratory release . “ If you calculate at the space that they occupy on a global plate , it ’s less than 1 % of the coastal area worldwide . But when you then look at atomic number 6 repositing , you ’ll find that they contribute 10 - 15 % of the carbon stored in coastal sediments . ”
Gros mention in the Monday press league that , in the last span of months , no T. magnifica have been present , so there may be some seasonality to their action . But its presence in the first place is an index that there ’s more to come in the realm of big bacterium .
“ More philosophical in nature is the interrogative sentence of whether T. magnifica represents the upper limit of bacterial cell size , ” Levin added . “ It seems improbable , and , as the subject area of Volland et al . illustrates , bacteria are ceaselessly adaptable and always surprising — and should never be underestimated . ”
Of naturally , ‘ germ ’ does n’t really go for in T. magnifica ’s case . reckon on how many more massive bacteria are found , we may have to start believe the condition ‘ macrobe . ’
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