Single Cell as Big as Your Fist

I'm constantly amazed at what biologists find in the deep sea. Of all the scientific findings that make us rethink all we think we know, deep sea biology tops that list.
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Single Cell Organisms as Big as Your Fist


In recent decades, deep sea researchers have upended our notions of what can survive at some of the deepest submerged places on Earth, revealing that a panoply of life thrives around seafloor vents and elsewhere in the depths. So we probably shouldn’t be surprised that researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have found giant amoebas living at unprecedented depths in the far reaches of the Mariana Trench. What is surprising is that these single-celled organisms are four inches across... Read the rest of the article on PopSci

Magnetic Algae

Just when you thought magnets couldn't get any cooler...

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Scientists Create Magnetic Algae

Proving that there’s always a different way to approach a problem, researchers at Los Alamos National Lab have devised a pretty clever method of algae harvesting that could take a major chunk out of the cost of algae-based biofuel production. And all they had to do was create a magnetic organism.

Scientists at LANL have genetically engineered a new kind of algae that is magnetic, which could lead to new and simple ways of both extracting genetically engineered biofuel-producing algae from water and extracting the lipids that contain the hydrocarbons from the algae. This part of the process generally accounts for roughly a third of the total cost of algae-based biofuel production, but now could conceivably be performed with a simple permanent magnet. That’s a lot simpler and cheaper than complex separating machines and other mechanical means of dividing algae from solutions.

The team created their GM magnetic algae by lifting a gene from magnetotactic bacteria--those are bacteria that use the Earth’s magnetic field to get around--and dropping it into the algae. When expressed, the gene causes the production of magnetic nanoparticles in the algae just as it does in the bacteria. Those in turn can be used to manipulate the algae.

The result: an algae that can be separated from a solution with a magnet. Why didn’t we think of this sooner?