‘Microorganism’ is a misnomer when it comes to centimetre-long Thiomargarita magnifica.
bacteria family, but the next-largest is only around 750 micrometres in length. Other filament-like bacteria are also found in the mangroves, but these all consist of tens or hundreds of cells. “What is very unique about theis that the entire filament, which is among the longest filaments in the mangrove, is just one cell,” says Volland.
Central to the bacterium is its vacuole — an inert, fluid-filled membrane. Around the edge of this are membrane-bound structures, which the authors call pepins and describe as being similar to the organelles found mostly in eukaryotic cells.Credit: Tomas Tyml/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryis remarkable for more than its size. In other bacteria, genetic material floats freely inside the cell, usually in the form of just one circular chromosome.
Many questions remain. Among these are whether the specific habitat of the mangrove, which has high levels of sulfur-containing molecules and sulfur-eating microbes, is crucial to the existence of this bacterium. And the pepins themselves needs a closer look to determine whether they all contain the same mix of genetic material, ribosomes and proteins. “We have not sequenced individual pepins — we have sequenced the entire cell, which contains hundreds of thousands of pepins,” says Volland.
“We really should not underestimate evolution, because we can’t guess where it’s going to go,” says Levin. “I would not have guessed this thing exists, but now that I see it, I can see the logic in the evolution to this point.”
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