Researchers have discovered the world’s largest bacterium in a Caribbean mangrove swamp.
Key highlights
- Olivier Gros, found the first example of this bacterium — named Thiomargarita magnifica, or “magnificent sulfur pearl” — clinging to sunken mangrove leaves in the archipelago of Guadeloupe in 2009.
- Most bacteria are microscopic, but this one is so big it can be seen with the naked eye.
- According to a scientist, the thin white filament, approximately the size of a human eyelash, is by far the largest bacterium known to date.
- Gros also found the bacterium attached to oyster shells, rocks and glass bottles in the swamp.
- Scientists have not yet been able to grow it in lab culture, but the researchers’ say the cell has a structure that’s unusual for bacteria.
- One key difference: it has a large central compartment, or vacuole, that allows some cell functions to happen in that controlled environment instead of throughout the cell.
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