In a startling discovery, scientists have discovered the largest bacterium, 5,000 times larger than most known bacteria and even visible to the naked eye. The organism, Thiomargarita magnified, appears as thin white filaments about 1 cm long. It was discovered by Olivier Gros, a professor of marine biology at the University of Antilles in Guadeloupe, in 2009. Gros was doing a study of marine mangrove systems when he stumbled upon a microbe. Unusually large bacteria in Guadeloupe, France. It was discovered on the surface of decaying mangrove leaves in the area.
After the encounter, the bacteria were analyzed in the laboratory and microscopic studies were carried out over the years to conclude that it was a sulfur-oxidizing prokaryote.
“When I saw them, I thought, ‘That’s weird. At first, I thought it was just something curious, some white silk that needed to be attached to something in the sediment like a leaf.” speak Gros.
Silvina Gonzalez-Rizzo, associate professor of molecular biology at the University of Antilles and co-first author of the new study published in Science, also performed 16S rRNA gene sequencing to identify the organism.
In the new study, a team of researchers from JGI and Berkeley Lab, LRC, and Université des Antilles in Guadeloupe, among others, characterized the giant bacterium and elucidated its genomic features.
Gonzalez-Rizzo says she initially thought the creatures were eukaryotes because they were so large and had so many filaments. “We recognized them as unique because it looked like a single cell. The fact that they are a ‘macro’ bacteria is fascinating! ” added Gonzalez-Rizzo after the bacteria were identified.
According to Jean-Marie Volland, the study’s scientists and co-author, while most bacteria have their DNA free-floating in the cytoplasm, the bacteria were found to keep them organized. . He added: “The big surprise of the project was the realization that these genome copies spread throughout the cell are actually contained within a membrane-bound structure. This bacterium is known to have three times more genes than most known bacteria.
