Largest bacterium ever found

[Bolletje]

You Don’t Need a Microscope to See the Biggest Bacteria Ever Found

On the island of Guadeloupe, scientists have found a type of bacterium that is large enough to be seen with the naked eye. It’s the size of an eyelash and looks like a tiny noodle.

This is, to me, an amazing find. In my cell biology lessons I’ve learned that bacteria are incredibly small, because single cell organisms are too “simple” to be large. This bacterium turns that belief upside down for me.

These bacteria are over 5000 times as big as the average bacteria. The cell structure is a lot more complex than was ever believed to be possible too. Even though it’s a single cell organism, it has different compartments with different functions. Even more incredible to me is that this single cell organism has a strong enough structure that it can be picked up with a pair of tweezers and maintain structural integrity. It doesn’t clump together in colonies either, these are solitary cells.

I’ve even read speculation that this type of bacterium might shed light on the evolutionary process, in which complexer life forms on earth evolved from single cell organisms.

A miniature mystery to me. I’m hoping to read about more of these discoveries in the future.

A worrying note for me, at the end of the article, is that the researchers have kept going back to the same place for samples, and now they can’t find the bacteria anymore. I would be very sad to find out that the researchers somehow (albeit accidentally) disturbed the conditions in which these bacteria lived, causing them to disappear.

 

[Misery]

Stuff like this is why I never accept any fact as being a 100% unbreakable truth.

Sometimes, the world surprises you, and something wild comes along, forcing a change of view.

 

[Atrapa Almas]

So interesting, thanks for sharing.

I find bacterias to be fascinating, I have the fantasy that the way they share gennes each other is like a very slow communication systems that a global scale could work like a brain. Being each bacteria like a neuron cell. So I tend to wonder if they is any super slow global intelligence on earth made by all the bacteria.

I dont expect it to be real, but still interesting to contemplate.

 

[Metalhead]

I could name many public figures who have the intelligence of single cell bacterias, but I will refrain from doing so.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

In microbiology while I cut my teeth on the genetics of coliforms and phage lambda, I enjoy slime molds both the cellular and acellular (multinucleate). What fascinates me is how cellular slime molds differentiate. After the fusion of two genetically different Amoeba, the fused cell pulsates cyclic AMP (cAMP). All free living Amoeba in the area home in on the cAMP signal and aggregate into a small slug-like creature that eventually differentiates into a stalk and capsule holding the spores of the next generation of ameoba. I once had wanted to look at the biochemical and genetic drivers of that differentiation

 

[Aspychata]

It's autistic bacterium, because it doesn't clump together in colonies. I like it already.

 

[Au Naturel]

There are some huge viruses out there. Just not that big.

Mimivirus | Learn Science at Scitable

 

[Shaddock]

There are some huge viruses out there.

they are called "humans" : D (irony)

 

[Lemon Zing]

Don't let Capcom know you heard about this bacterial growth, or they will use it in the next Resident Evil game, set in Raccoon City once more!