Original version With This story appeared in How much warehouse.
Prochlorococcus The bacteria are so petite that you will have to determine about a thousand of them to match the thickness of the human miniature. The ocean is seen with them: microorganisms are likely The most abundant Fotosynthetic body on the planet I form a significant part – 10 percent to 20 percent – oxygen atmosphere. This means that life on Earth depends on about 3 octillion (or 3 × 1027) Petite individual cells.
Biologists once considered these organisms as isolated wanderers, it drifts in an unfathomable enormity. But Prochlorococcus The population can be more related than anyone could imagine. They can conduct talks at wide distances, not only filling the ocean with envelopes in information and nutrients, but also combine their private, internal spaces with the interiors of other cells.
At the University of Córdoba in Spain, recently biologists taking paintings of cyanobacteria under a microscope saw a cell that grew a long, lean tube and caught a neighbor. The picture made them sit down. It came to them that it was not a coincidence.
“We realized that the cyanobacteria are related,” he said María del Carmen Muñoz-Marínthere a microbiologist. There were connections between Prochlorococcus cells, as well as with a different bacterium, called Synechococcus, who often lives nearby. In the pictures, silver bridges combined three, four, and sometimes 10 or more cells.
Muñoz-Marín had a feeling of identity of these mysterious structures. After the tests battery she and her colleagues recently reported that these bridges are bacterial nanoters. For the first time observed in a common laboratory bacteria just 14 years ago, bacterial nanoorurists are structures made of cell membrane that allow the flow of nutrients and resources between two or more cells.
The structures were Source of fascination and controversy Over the past decade, like microbiologists have worked on understanding, which means that they form and what exactly travel between these network cells. Pictures from the Muñoz-Marín laboratory meant for the first time these structures in the cyanobacteria responsible for such a vast amount of soil photosynthesis.
They undermine fundamental ideas about bacteria, raising questions such as: how much does he do Prochlorococcus Share with the cells around him? And does it really make sense to think about it and other bacteria as one -cell?
Completely tubular
Many bacteria have Active social life. Some make them drink, right protein growth that connects two cells to enable them to replace the DNA. Some form dense tiles together, known as Biofilms. And many emit small bubbles known as bubbles which contain DNA, RNA or other chemicals, such as news in a bottle for any cell that captures them.
It is bubbles that Muñoz-Mañoz-Marín and her Colleas, including José Manuel García-Alnandez, a micrologist from the University of Córdoba and student student. Elisa Angulo-CánovasThey were looking for when they were approaching Prochlorococcus AND Synechococcus in a dish. When they saw what they suspected, they were nanoruries, it was a surprise.