Re: A large colonial choanoflagellate from Mono Lake harbors live bacteria

On 8/23/2024 2:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01623-24
 ABSTRACT
As the closest living relatives of animals, choanoflagellates offer insights into the ancestry of animal cell physiology. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of a colonial choanoflagellate from Mono Lake, California. The choanoflagellate forms large spherical colonies that are an order of magnitude larger than those formed by the closely related choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta. In cultures maintained in the laboratory, the lumen of the spherical colony is filled with a branched network of extracellular matrix and colonized by bacteria, including diverse Gammaproteobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria. We propose to erect Barroeca monosierra gen. nov., sp. nov. Hake, Burkhardt, Richter, and King to accommodate this extremophile choanoflagellate. The physical association between bacteria and B. monosierra in culture presents a new experimental model for investigating interactions among bacteria and eukaryotes. Future work will investigate the nature of these interactions in wild populations and the mechanisms underpinning the colonization of B. monosierra spheres by bacteria.
 

When it was pointed out on TO that bacteria far outnumber all other lifeforms on the planet I once joked that the designer had obviously created multicellular lifeforms as condominiums for his prize pet bacteria, and that when the designer got around to checking back in that there would be hell to pay when he finds out that one of the condominiums is using things like antibiotics and soap to kill trillions of his pets.  Behe may think along the same lines because why else would a designer give a plague bacteria like Y. pestis a flagellum?
Ron Okimoto