untitled design

World’s Largest Bacteria Discovered and Scientists Compare Human Eyelash Shape

A newly discovered bacterium — which is large enough to be visible to the naked eye and resembles the shape and size of an eyelash — has been found in Guadeloupe, in the Lesser Antilles, according to a published study this Thursday (23) in the journal Science.

These are bacteria like you’ve never seen them before – probably because, until now, all known bacteria could only be seen using a powerful compound microscope.

Thiomargarita magnifica – a reference to its exceptional size – has an average cell length of over 9,000 micrometers, which is almost 1 centimeter long. The cells of most bacterial species are about 2 micrometers in length, although the largest can reach 750 micrometers.

T. magnifica can grow up to 2 centimeters in length, according to study co-author Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist and scientist at the California Complex Systems Research Laboratory and an affiliate of the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute. .

“To understand how gigantic this is for a bacterium, it’s the same as finding a human as high as Mount Everest,” he told CNN on Wednesday (22).

More than 625,000 E. coli bacteria could fit on the surface of a single T. magnifica. However, despite its size, the bacterium has a “remarkably pristine” surface, devoid of the bacteria that live on the surface of living plants and animals, according to the study.

How does he sustain his size?

It was previously thought that bacteria could not grow to a size visible to the naked eye because of the way they interact with their environment and produce energy.

But T. magnifica has an extensive network of membranes that can produce energy so it doesn’t just rely on the surface of the bacterium to absorb nutrients through its cell.

Volland was able to visualize and observe the giant cells in 3D with the help of hard X-ray tomography, confocal laser scanning microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, according to a press release.

Unlike most bacteria, which have genetic material floating around freely within their single cell, a T. magnifica cell has its DNA contained in small membrane-bound sacs called cucumbers.

“This was a very interesting finding that opens up a lot of new questions because it’s not something that is classically observed in bacteria. It is actually a feature of more complex cells, the type of cells that make up our bodies or animals and plants,” he said. said Volland.

“We want to understand what these cucumbers are and what exactly they do, and whether they play a role in the evolution of gigantism for these bacteria, for example.”

T. magnifica was first discovered growing as thin white filaments on the surfaces of decaying mangrove leaves in shallow tropical marine mangroves in Guadeloupe, according to the study.

These giant bacteria grow in sediments at the bottom of sulfur waters, where they harness the chemical energy of sulfur and use oxygen from the surrounding water to produce sugars, according to Volland. T. magnifica can also produce food from carbon dioxide.

It has been suggested that because it is much larger than an average bacterium, a T. magnifica cell might be better at accessing both the oxygen and sulfur in its environment at the same time, according to Volland.

It’s also possible that the size of T. magnifica cells compared to the other microbes in the bacterial population means they don’t have to worry about being eaten by predators.

A microbial ‘black box’

Tanja Woyke, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, believes it is likely that the giant bacteria, or related species, can be found in other mangroves around the world.

“It always amazes me how little we know about the microbial world and how much there is out there,” she told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the microbial world “is still a black box.”

Woyke, who leads the US Department of Energy’s Microbial Genomics Program at the US Joint Genome Institute, is one of the study’s lead authors.

“Confirmation bias related to viral size has prevented the discovery of giant viruses for more than a century,” the study concluded. “The discovery of Ca. T. magnifica suggests that larger, more complex bacteria may be hiding in plain sight.”

“Just because we haven’t seen it yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Woyke added.

Source: CNN Brasil

You may also like

Get the latest

Stay Informed: Get the Latest Updates and Insights

 

Most popular