447: Big Bacteria Bank Behaviors

This episode: Giant bacteria with many chromosomes in each cell
carry extra genes to help them live in many different
environments!


Download Episode (8.7 MB, 12.7 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Propionibacterium virus SKKY



News item


 


Takeaways




We think of bacteria a certain way: too small to see and
having mostly just a single large chromosome with all the
genes they need for their lifestyle and not much more. And
most bacteria are like that. But not all! Giant bacteria
exist, some of which can be so large that individual cells
can be seen without a microscope.


 


Achromatium species are one such kind of bacteria. They form
clumps of minerals that take up most of their internal
volume, but their cells are big enough to see and handle. In
order to supply all parts of their vast innards with
proteins, they have many copies of their chromosome
distributed throughout their cytoplasm.


 


In this study, a survey of Achromatium genomes from all
different kinds of ecosystem revealed that even different
species in very different environments all seem to share one
set of genetic functions, but only use the ones they need for
their particular lifestyle while archiving the rest.



 
Journal Paper:
Ionescu D, Zoccarato L, Zaduryan A, Schorn S, Bizic M, Pinnow S,
Cypionka H, Grossart H-P. Heterozygous, Polyploid, Giant
Bacterium, Achromatium, Possesses an Identical Functional
Inventory Worldwide across Drastically Different Ecosystems. Mol
Biol Evol https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaa273.


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Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot
com. Thanks for listening!


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