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

On 24/08/2024 10:54, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2024-08-23 19:59:29 +0000, erik simpson said:
 

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01623-24
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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

 by volume, by surface area, by diameter? It makes a huge difference.

It's open access. S. rosetta colonies are 10-15 micrometers in diameter. B. monosierra colonies are 10-120 micrometers in diameter. The respective modes are 12 and 26 micrometers in diameter. So the maximum is an order of magnitude larger in diameter, and the mode an order of magnitude larger in volume. The caption to figure 1F applies order of magnitude to the diameter, in which case the abstract should have included the words "up to".

 

 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.

 

--
alias Ernest Major