The original version from This story appeared in How much magazine.
Far away Microbe are in complex relationships. In the ocean, in the ground and in their intestines, they could fight and eat each other, exchange ideas DNACompare nutrients or feed on the side products of the other. Sometimes they become even more intimate: one cell Could slip into another and make yourself comfortable. If the conditions are exactly right, it can stay and welcomed to exploit a relationship that could take generations or billions of years. This phenomenon of a cell that lives in another, endosymbiosis, has fueled the development of complex life.
Examples of endosymbiosis are everywhere. Mitochondria, the energy abrasions in their cells, Bacteria were once living freely. Photosynthetic plants owe the chloroplast, who was originally an independent organism, their sun -spun sugar. Many insects get essential nutrients From bacteria that live in them. And last year researcher discovered the “nitroplasts”, An endosymbion that helps some algae process nitrogen.
So much life is based on endosymbiotic relationships, but scientists have tried to understand how they happen. How does an internalized cell go from digestion? How does it learn to reproduce in his host? What makes a random merger of two independent organisms a stable, permanent partnership?
For the first time, the researchers saw the opening choreography of this microscopic dance by Induction of endosymbiosis in the laboratory. After injecting bacteria into a mushroom-one process, the creative problem solving (and a bicycle pump)-the researchers required the collaboration without killing the bacteria or the landlord. Your observations offer an insight into the conditions that make it possible for the same to fit in the microbial wilderness.
The cells were even faster than expected. “For me, this means that organisms actually want to live together and symbiosis is the norm” Vasilis in CokkorA mycologist who examined the cell biology of the symbiosis at the VU University in Amsterdam and was not involved in the new study. “This is big, great news for me and for this world.”
Early attempts that fell briefly show that most cellular love affairs are unsuccessful. But through understanding how, why and when organisms accept endosymbiontes, researchers can better understand the most important moments in evolution and potentially also develop synthetic cells that have been developed with overpowered endosymbions.
The cell wall fracture
Julia VorholtA microbiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland has long been confused about the circumstances of endosymbiosis. Researchers in the field theorized that the relationship between infection and harmony, as soon as a bacterium creeps into a host cell, suppresses between infection and harmony. If the bacterium reproduces too quickly, there is a risk of tightening the host’s resources and triggering an immune response, which leads to the death of the guest, host or both. If it reproduces too slowly, it does not establish itself in the cell. Only in rare cases, as they believe, does the bacterium achieve a Goldillocks continued planting rate. In order to become a real endosymbion, it must infiltrate the reproductive cycle of its host in order to achieve a trip to the next generation. Finally the host Genome Finally, must mutate to absorb the bacterium to develop the two as a unit.
“They become dependent on each other,” said Vorholt.
