Original version From This story It appeared Quanta MagazineHuman
Scattered Bacteria are so small that you have to queue about a thousand of them to match the thickness of a small human image. The oceans are confronted with them: Germs are probably the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth and produce a significant portion of 10 to 20 percent of the oxygen. This means that life on earth depends on approximately 3 October (or 10 3 3 327) Small and small cells that are destroyed.
Biologists once thought of these creatures as wandering, and were in an unbearable area. But Scattered The population may be more related than it thought. They may make conversations over large distances, not only filling the ocean with information and nutrient envelopes, but also linking what their interior and interior spaces were with the interior of other cells, transplantation. They give.
At the University of Cordoba in Spain, biologists recently saw cyanobacter images under the microscope, saw a cell growing a long, thin tube and taking its neighbor. The image has made them sit down. He drew on them that this was not a rose.
“We realized that cyanobacteria have been connected to each other,” said Maria Del Carmen Mohsez-Mary, a microbiologist. There were links between Scattered Cells, as well as with another bacterium, are called Synechococcus, That often lives nearby. In the pictures, silver bridges were connected three, four and sometimes 10 or more cells.
Muñoz-Marín had the identity of these mysterious hunting structures. After the test battery, he and his colleagues recently reported that these bridges are bacterial nanotubes. The first was observed in a joint laboratory bacterium only 14 years ago, bacterial nanotubes are structures made of cell membrane that allow nutrients and sources to flow between two or more cells.
These structures have been a source of charm and controversy over the past decade, as microbiologists have tried to understand their formation and exactly what is traveling through these network cells. Pictures from the Muñoz-MaríN Laboratory are the first time these structures have been seen in Cyanobacteria, which are responsible for many of the Earth’s photosynthesis.
They challenge basic ideas about bacteria and questions such as: how much do they do Scattered Share with the cells around it? And is it really logical to think about it and other bacteria as a cell?
Complete tube
Many bacteria have active social life. Some of them develop the growth of Pili protein, which connects the two cells to allow them to exchange DNA. Some dense plates together are known as biofilm. And many small bubbles known as vesicles that contain DNA, RNA or other chemicals, such as messages in a bottle for each cell for interception.
It was a vesicle that was sought to magnify their magnification, including Jose Manuel Garcia-Fernandez, a microbiologist at the University of Cordoba, and a graduate student at Eliza Anglo-Beneva. Scattered Vat Sand In a container, when they saw what they were suspicious, the nanotubes were surprised.
