Scientists have successfully grown ancient microbes in the lab and taken detailed images of them.
Researchers believed that ancient microbes that lived on Earth even before organisms with nuclei-containing cells arose could reveal the secret of how such complex organisms arose on the planet. According to Live Science, scientists have now grown large numbers of ancient microbes in the lab to study their internal structures in detail for the first time.
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Scientists from the University of Vienna, Austria, developed an organism called Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, which belongs to a group of microbes called Asgardian archaea. These microorganisms got this name in honor of the habitat of the gods from Old Norse myths. Some biologists believe that these microbes are the closest evolutionary relatives of eukaryotes, that is, organisms with cells that have a nucleus in which DNA is packaged. And these are already more complex life forms.
“From an evolutionary standpoint, Asgardian archaea appear to be either relatives or even direct ancestors of eukaryotes. While these microbes do not have nuclei in their cells, they contain a set of genes and proteins that were once thought to be specific to eukaryotes. How might the Asgardian archaea have obtained primitive nuclei and thus later evolved into plants, There are many theories trying to explain how it might have produced the first complex cells that gave rise to animals and even humans,” says Jan Lewe of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.
Two years ago, Japanese scientists bred in the laboratory a representative of the Asgardian archaea, a microbe named Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum, named after the ancient Greek god Prometheus. However, it was not possible to understand the internal structure of the body. Now Austrian scientists have not only grown another microbe species, Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, but also obtained detailed images of its internal structures.
“It took us 6 long years to do this, but now we have the experience to do other similar research,” says Krista Schleper of the University of Vienna.
According to the scientists, Lokiarchaeum ossiferum grows quite fast compared to other Asgardian archaea, and its cell count doubles in about one to two weeks. Other similar microbes can grow for up to 25 days. For comparison, the well-known bacterium Escherichia coli (this is Escherichia coli) multiplies every 20 minutes. Microbial specimens of Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, originally collected from one of the reservoirs in Slovenia, have peculiar tentacles protruding from each cell. And each such tentacle has strange protrusions along its entire length.
Loewe said that such protrusions on the tentacles may support the idea that at some point in evolution, an Asgardian archaea captured a nearby bacterium and pulled it into its cell body, leading to the development of a nucleus.
“These bumps support the idea that this kind of interaction may have taken place between ancient microorganisms,” Loewe says.
Also, according to scientists, on the surface of the microbe Lokiarchaeum ossiferum there are very unusual structures that seem to have come from another planet. This microbe also has fibers that resemble the cytoskeleton or cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells.
Some scientists believe the new study supports the hypothesis that Asgardian archaea are direct ancestors of eukaryotes, that is, more complex life, but not everyone supports this conclusion.
Focus The bibliophile has already written that the mushroom inspires scientists looking for alien life. Scientists have discovered microorganisms thriving in libraries in Italy.
Source: Focus
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