Elusive Single-Celled Predators Found In The Ocean Have Been Identified By Researchers

Earth is composed of mysterious things. From the smallest to cell to the largest, it all plays an important role. Now, an ocean microbe that scientists thought to be insignificant is found that it plays an important role.

A team of researchers led by the University of Columbia has found the first glimpse of one of the ocean's elusive predators. The unusual microbe that was once thought to be irrelevant, but turned out to be one of the richest single-celled hunters in the ocean.

Science Daily reported that the tiny cells that researchers ignored before are called the diplonemids. Recently, the marine diversity survey found that diplonemids are the most abundant protozoa that are a diverse group of the single-celled organism not including viruses and bacteria in the ocean.

Although the diplonemids are found abundant, they had never been observed directly or captured by the experts in the ocean. Now, for the first time, researchers from the UBC together with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) have gone into the oceans and managed to study them.

A professor of botany at UBC and director of the Integrated Microbial Biodiversity program at CIFAR, Patrick Keeling, said that "When a microbe is so abundant, it probably plays a very important role in the ecosystem. The microbial world is one of the last frontiers of exploration of our planet, and we're using microscopes together with genomics to learn as much as possible about this invisible life."

The study shows that the diplonemids are a group of species that is diverse. It comes from different sizes and shapes and hunts both larger algae and bacteria.

Also, the researchers found that diplonemids have an interesting genome. It is large and full of "junk" DNA called introns that interrupt the genes. The introns are usually found in genes of all complex cells. As for the diplonemids, the experts found that the introns are unique and appear to scatter the same about how the virus copies its genetic material into other cells when it attacks.

However, the researchers need to learn more on how what is the diplonemids' role in maintaining the marine ecosystem. For that to happen, they have to figure out first on how to bring the diplonemids alive in the lab. According to Phys.Org, Prof. Keeling added that "It's like discovering lions after having only seen gazelles, antelopes and zebras for so many years."