Louis, who was not involved in the discovery isn’t surprised by its size. Petra Anne Levin, a microbiologist at Washington University in St. But the Caribbean bacterium is more than 50 times larger. In 1999, Teske and other scientists discovered the strikingly large bacterium that they called Thiomargarita namibiensis, or the “Sulfur Pearl of Namibia.” Until now that bacterium-which grows as a string of white beads, occasionally reaching the size of three-fourths of a millimeter and is large enough to be visible to the naked eye- held the record for the largest bacterium. “Bacteria keep defying textbook descriptions of them.” It’s a stunning illustration that bacteria are much more complex, organized, and versatile than we expect, says Chris Greening, a microbiologist at Monash University, Australia, who was not involved in the discovery. Teske co-discovered the previous size record-holder, Thiomargarita namibiensis. “The discovery of this new Thiomargarita bacterium makes us appreciate the incredible diversity of the microbial world, and the intricate structural and genomic adaptations of bacteria that allow them to grow towards cell sizes that nobody would have expected,” says Andreas Teske, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a news conference on Tuesday Vollard said that “Discovering this bacterium is like encountering a human being that will be as tall as Mount Everest.” magnifica is not only more than a thousand times bigger than a typical bacterium, it’s also longer than many multicellular animals such as fruit flies. The scientists have named the microbe Thiomargarita magnifica for its size and the pearl-like beads of sulphur found inside the cell. “Realizing that a filamentous bacteria of that size is actually just a single bacterium was an aha moment,” says Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who led the research, in an interview with National Geographic. But the newfound bacteria, which is roughly the shape and the size of an eyelash, is a single bacterial cell. Previously discovered giant bacteria, some of which can also form centimeters-long filaments, are composed of hundreds to thousands of cells.
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