When you hear the phrase “bacteria,” you in all probability image organisms that could not be seen until they’re positioned underneath a microscope. A bacterium that has now been categorized as the biggest on the earth ever found, nevertheless, wants no particular instruments to be seen to the bare eye. Thiomargarita magnifica, because it’s referred to as, takes on a filament-like look and may be so long as a human eyelash. As the BBC notes, that makes it larger than some extra advanced organisms, corresponding to tiny flies, mites and worms. It was first found by marine biologist Olivier Gros dwelling on sunken mangrove tree leaves within the French Caribbean again in 2009. 

Due to the organism’s measurement, Gros first thought he was a eukaryote relatively than less complicated prokaryotic organisms like micro organism. It wasn’t till he bought again to his laboratory that he discovered that it wasn’t the case in any respect. Years later, Jean-Marie Volland and his group on the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California took a more in-depth have a look at the bacterium utilizing varied strategies, corresponding to transmission electron microscopy, to verify that it’s certainly a single-cell organism. They’ve just lately revealed a paper describing the centimeter-long bacterium in Science.

Volland mentioned T. magnifica is “5,000 times bigger than most bacteria” and is corresponding to a median particular person “encountering another human as tall as Mount Everest.” One different data Volland’s group has found is that the bacterium retains its DNA organized inside a construction that has a membrane. In most micro organism, DNA supplies simply float freely of their cytoplasm. Further, it has round 6,000 billion bases of DNA. “For comparison, a diploid human genome is approximately six giga (billion) bases in size. So this means that our Thiomargarita stores several orders of magnitude more DNA in itself as compared to a human cell,” mentioned group member Tanja Woyke. 

While the scientists know that T. magnifica grows on high of mangrove sediments within the Caribbean and that it creates power to reside utilizing chemosynthesis, which has similarities to photosynthesis in crops, there’s nonetheless rather a lot about it that continues to be a thriller. And it’s going to possible take a while earlier than the scientists can uncover its secrets and techniques: They have but to determine how one can develop the organism within the lab, so Gros has to collect samples each time they wish to run an experiment. It does not assist that the organism has an unpredictable life cycle. Gros advised The New York Times that he could not even discover any over the previous two months. 

Volland and his group now goal to find a way to grow T. magnifica within the lab. As for Gros, he now expects different groups to go off in the hunt for even larger micro organism, which like T. magnifica, may additionally be hiding in plain sight.