HYPHEN-SIZED CREATURE FOUND TO BE BIGGEST GERM (NEWS ARTICLE, THE SUN)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00789R003900560002-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 6, 2003
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 18, 1993
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2003/04/18 :CIA-RDP96-007898003900560002-7
Naked eye able to see single-celled giant: ;?.~ g ~ ~re ~l,'the ea~-a~g~
~Iyphen-sized creature found to be biggest germ
3y Natalie Angier
Jew York 1Ymes News Service
Flouting the scientific canon that eth of an inch in length and possess-
~ll b$$ are microsco is re- ing a volume a million times that of
?earcfi~ave dlsc~ ? ~~'~n the common E. cola microbe, the
~~~~1 it can-`be seen w e newly discovered bacterium seems to
____.__ _ defy laws of biology that limit how
~l m _. a we s of an Aus-
an s , !s about the size of a
hen in a newspaper, making it
,y far the largest bacterium ever de-
ected.
in measuring more than one-fifti-
Appr
big a simple bacterial cell can grow.
So outsized Is the creature that
researchers may soon be able to use
!t to begin exploring the'Intimate de-
tails of bacterial innards, a task im-
possible with the tinier species of mi-
crobes.
a bacterium. The report of the gia~
"It's so huge that we could stick .:bacteriumi.called Epulopiscium fist
electrodes into it," said Esther R. An-. . elsoni, appears today in the Brltis
gert of Indiana University in Bloom- :. Journal Na#ure.
ington. "T'here's a world of cell physi- "I think it's incredibly excltir
ology that could be done with this ~.. and it's ad extremely convincing ~
thing." per,"said Dr. James R. Lupski ~
The researcher, who is finishing Baylor College of Medicine in Hou;
her doctorate in the laboratory of Dr: ton, who has long studied bacterl~
Norman Pace, performed the;experl- genetics. '"The old way of defining
ments that demonstrated the. bacte- bacterium was to look under a m
rial nature of the beast.
She showed that despite ifs ex- See BACTERIA, 15A, Col.
Hyphen-sized blob found
to be world's biggest germ
Naked eye able
to see creature
BACTERIA, from 1 A
croscope, see what size it was and
whether it stained one way or anoth-
er. Now we're redefining life forms
based on what kind of DNA they
have."
Commanding though the bacter!-
um is,, it may not be the world's larg-
est.
Realizing that bacteria have the
ability to grow beyond boundaries
previously set for them, scientists
may well find other examples of sin-
gle-celled beings with macroscopic
aspirations.
"This type of study points to how
little we know about microbial diver-
sity," Ms. Angert said. "Here's this
huge organism that seems to be a
significant part of a fish's intestines,
and it's Just recently been discov-
ered. Who can say what else is out
there waiting to be found?"
Scientists have long believed that
them, must rely on slow diffusion to
wrest what they need from their sur-
roundings. So they must remain very
tiny to allow essential molecules to
drift from one part of the cell to an-
other.
By comparison, the cells of higher
organisms, such as yeast, algae, in-
sects and humans, are eukaryotes
and have small internal structures to
ferry molecules about.
Pulverizing the genetic material
from the bacteria, the researchers
multiplied the DNA into mlWons of
copies through the use of a technique
called polymerase chain reaction.
They next compared the genes
with those from many other known
prokaryotes and eukaryotes and
demonstrated that E. fishelsoni is a
true bacterium.
Indeed. when the organism was
discovered in 1985 by Israel! re-
searchers who found it in the intes-
tinal tract of common brown aur-
geonfish living in the Red Sea, they
thought it must be an alga, protozo-
an or other eukaryote.
More recently, Kendall D. Clem-
es Cook University to
ents of
a
m
J
k
~
c
~
~te~i ;~~~,a ~v$t
cellular organization for swift move- cau ht around the Great Barrier
ment of nutrients and oxygen inside Ree~of Australia.