The original version of This story appeared in How much magazine.
Prochlorococcus Bacteria are so small that you will have to align about a thousand of them to match the thickness of a human thumbnail. The ocean joins with them: the microbes are probably the most abundant Photosynthetic organism on the planet, and they create a significant share – 10 percent to 20 percent – from the oxygen of the atmosphere. This means that life on earth depends on the about 3 octillions (or 3 × 1027) tiny individual cells pushing away.
Biologists once thought of these organisms as isolated wanderers, Adrift in unavailable vastness. But the Prochlorococcus A population may be more linked than anyone could imagine. They may hold conversations through wide distances, not only filling the ocean with envelopes of information and food, but also linking what we thought they were their private, internal spaces with the interiors of other cells.
At the University of Córdoba in Spain, not long ago, biologists winding images of the cyanobacteria under a microscope saw a cell that grew a long, thin tube and seized his neighbor. The picture made them sit. On them that this was not fluent.
“We realized that the cyanobacteria were connected to each other,” said María del Carmen Muñoz-MarínA microbiologist there. There were links between Prochlorococcus cells, as well as with another bacterium, called Synechococcus, which often lives nearby. In the pictures, silver bridges tied three, four, and sometimes 10 or more cells.
Muñoz-Marín had a hunt for the identity of these mysterious structures. After a battery of trials, she and her colleagues Recently reported That these bridges are bacterial nanotubes. First observed in a joint laboratory bacterium just 14 years ago, bacterial nanotubes are structures made of cell membrane, which allow foods and resources to flow between two or more cells.
The structures were a source of fascination and controversy Over the last decade, as microbiologists have worked to understand what causes them to develop and what, exactly, travel between these network cells. The images of the Muñoz-Marín lab marked the first time when these structures were seen in the cyanobacteria responsible for so much of the photosynthesis of the Earth.
They challenge fundamental ideas of bacteria, raising questions like: how much does Prochlorococcus Share with the cells around it? And does it really make sense to think about it, and other bacteria, like one-celled?
Completely tubular
Many bacteria have Active social lives. Some make pili, hair growth of protein, which bind two cells to allow them to exchange DNA. Some form dense plaques together, called Biofilms. And many output tiny bubbles known as vesicles This contains DNA, RNA or other chemicals, such as messages in a bottle for whatever cell intercept them.
It is the vesicles that Muñoz-Mañoz-Marín and her colleagues, including the José Manuel García-Fernandez, a micrologist at the University of Córdoba, and a graduate student. Elisa angle-cánovassearched as they buzzed Prochlorococcus And Synechococcus in a dish. When they saw what they suspected, there were nanotubes, it was a surprise.