Discovered in 2009 by Olivier Gros at Universite des Antilles, he originally thought he had stumbled across fungi amongst the rotting leaves, sunken in the mangroves of Guadeloupe. It wasn’t until recently that T. magnifica’s unique features were finally unearthed!
Found living in a sulphur-rich envrionment
Found living in a sulphur-rich environment, it survives by making its own nutrients from oxidising sulphur, and by finding a range of solids to grip onto, including leaves, branches and sadly, even bottles and plastic bags! As long as they have access to sulphur and seawater for their oxygen and CO2, they can survive.
Now, let’s talk genetics!
Your average bacterium contains a circular chromosome, containing its DNA which floats freely in its cytoplasm.
T. magnifica are different. Storing its genetics in membrane-bound vesicles called pepins, scattered throughout its cytoplasm, one pepin can host up to 700,000 copies of its genome. With one genome containing around 12 million base pairs, there is a lot more DNA than your average bacteria, by far!
5,000 times larger than your average bacteria
Bacteria are usually restricted by size, the average being just 1µm - 5µm in length and only visible through a microscope. But not the T. magnifica! They are outstandingly 1cm in length, visible to the naked eye and show no signs of causing disease. That is 5,000 times larger than your average bacteria – which is the equivalent of meeting another human-being as tall as Mount Everest!
Size restrictions of bacteria are thought to be due to their energy source, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is produced by the enzyme, ATP Synthase being highly restricted to the cell envelope. Whereas T. magnifica has ATP Synthase is in its pepins. Additionally, elongation genes were found to be duplicated, adding to its susceptibility to increasing size.
Having the complex features of eukaryotic cells, such as internal membrane-bound compartments, will we have to rethink the features of prokaryotes?
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01757-1