We find microorganisms rarer than a ticket to the moon

Rather go to the moon than find the tentacled microorganism known as legendrea loeza. Between 1968 and 1972, NASA’s Apollo program sent 24 people to the moon. Instead, only four in the whole world saw legendrea loeza from its discovery in 1908 to our discovery.

Considering the cost of traveling to the Moon, it’s not surprising that the number of people sent to such a remote location is small. But you don’t need a million dollar budget to see into the microscopic world. All you need is a microscope and someone willing to sit in front of it.

Our recent discoveries have identified 20 new microbial species and about 100 others that are considered rare because they have been discovered so few times in the history of microbiology.

Each specimen we find and test to isolate its DNA adds another piece to the evolutionary puzzle. Such a puzzle helps scientists figure out how microorganisms work in nature, which genes are involved in cellular biochemistry, or add new branches to the tree of life.

The reason why so few researchers have discovered these rare microorganisms is mainly due to the lack of sampling of the ecosystems they inhabit. Most research teams take random samples, usually from one location and one location.

Our method is different. Over the past two years, we have taken more than a thousand samples in a variety of water systems: lakes and ponds in Warsaw (Poland); marine sediments in the North Sea; on the coasts of Italy and Portugal, as well as in the limestone streams of Dorset (UK) and many others. Our searches and fetches are intense, but the effort is worth it. We have observed more than 500 species of microorganisms, many of which are well known, others are considered extremely rare, and some are completely new.

Microbiology is the history of mankind.

Life on Earth originated in water as microscopic single-celled organisms and has remained so for billions of years. Some of these single-celled organisms evolved into more complex forms through various association mechanisms with other microorganisms, which eventually gave rise to all visible life around us. Others have not changed much and retained their single-celled nature. But, oddly enough, most of the organisms that inhabit our planet today are still microscopic. Microorganisms are all around us, they can be found in every habitat, from puddles to oceans, and we still have a lot to figure out.

Microorganisms were also the first predators on Earth, and so symbiosis began to give rise to more complex forms.

But the micro-organisms, in turn, serve as food for larger species, as happens, for example, with krill and other zooplankton in the oceans. If the organisms at the bottom of this food chain were to disappear, all the other parts above it would also collapse.

If we could compress the billions of years of Earth’s history into one, life would remain extremely microscopic until the end of October. People will appear in the last 30 minutes of the year, and we will not know about the existence of microorganisms until three seconds before the new year.

The tree of life shows how organisms are related to each other. Looking at this, it’s easy to see that most life on Earth is still microscopic, with multicellular creatures such as animals, plants, and fungi limited to a small cluster within the eukaryotic group. Unlike the other two groups (archaea and bacteria), eukaryotes store their DNA in the cell nucleus.

microscopic oddity

But back to legendrea loeza. This microorganism is located inside ciliates, in the branch of eukaryotes. Oxygen is lethal to legendrea loezaand has retractable tentacles to catch its prey.

Infusoria can be found wherever there is water, even in thin watery soil films and even in places where there is no oxygen. Although ciliates are completely dependent on water, some of them can form protective structures that allow them to remain inactive during drought or lack of moisture in the environment. Ciliates consist of a single cell, but are incredibly diverse. In addition, they also have interesting hunting strategies: some specialize in eating strands of cyanobacteria, which they suck up like spaghetti. Others lead a sedentary lifestyle, for example vorticellawhich has a stick for sticking to submerged surfaces.

Some types of ciliates form permanent relationships with other groups of organisms, known as symbiosis. For example, there are ciliates that feed on the single-celled algae inside, feeding on the sugar they produce during photosynthesis. In turn, ciliates protect microalgae from viruses (yes, even algae can become infected with viruses) and from other organisms entering the body.

Ciliates can be found forming communities with high population densities, especially in well-oxygenated environments. But others are present in such small numbers that finding them is like looking for a thousand needles in a haystack the size of Mount Everest. And this is our goal.

Our goal is to find as many of these rare and unusual species as possible. To do this, we use knowledge about the ecology of these species, which gives us the key to finding them. If we know that some microorganism prefers to live in dark habitats without access to oxygen, we waste no time looking for it on the surface of the water, where there is a lot of oxygen and light. Find four copies legendrea loeza it took us hundreds of hours under the microscope, not to mention the expense of physical therapy to relieve neck and back pain.

Why are microorganisms important?

It is easy to feel far from something invisible, and micro-organisms, due to their tiny size, are not found in our daily lives. But microorganisms have been the protagonists of some of the most important scientific discoveries in history. Unfortunately, they also take lives when they infect humans, animals, and plants, or when they reach a mass bloom in the sea that destroys shellfish, shrimp, or oyster farms.

But we couldn’t live without them. Microorganisms are responsible for the survival of our ecosystems and their recovery from environmental damage such as pollution or climate change. They are essential for food production, antibiotics and other medicines, help clean our wastewater, and improve the fertility of agricultural soils.

So exploring the microscopic world is worth the back pain.

Genoveva Esteban, Professor of Microbial Ecology, Bournemouth University, and James Weiss, Research Fellow in Microbiology, Bournemouth University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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