Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003900540002-9 THURSDAY, MARCH 18,1993 « VOLUME 312, NUMBER 105 _ BALTIMORE, MARYLAND _ HOME DELIVERY: 25¢ ta most Hyphen-sized creature found to be biggest germ By Natalie Angier ew York Times News Service Flouting the scientific canon that Naked eye able to see single-celled giant - . bacterium; called Epulopiscium fis eth of an inch in length and possess- il bacteria are microscopic,, re-,,..ing a volume a million times that of warchers have discovered &8train’” the common E. coli microbe, the w huge that it.can be’seen with the The. single-celled organism, ‘lucked from the bowels of an Aus- ralian fish, is about the size of a -yphen in a newspaper, making it -y far the largest bacterium ever de- scted, In measuring more than one-fiftt- newly discovered bacterlum seems to defy laws of biology that limit how big a simple bacterial cell can grow. So outsized is the creature that researchers may soon be able to use it to begin exploring the intimate de- tails of bacterial innards, a task im- possible with the tinfer species of mi- crobes. “It's so huge that we could stick electrodes into it,” said Esther R. An-: gert of Indiana University in Bloom. - fo ‘- “T think. it’s incredibly excitt ~and it's an extremely convincing fF .. .per,*-said Dr. James R. Lupski ington. “There's a world of cell phys!- ology that could be done with this* thing.” . a The researcher, who Is finishing '~ her doctorate in the laboratory of Dr. Norman Pace, performed the‘experi- ments that demonstrated the’ bacte- rial nature of the beast. eS She showed that despite its ex- Hyphen-sized blob found to be world’s biggest germ Naked eye able to see creature BACTERIA, from 1A 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 bacteri- 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- ple-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 !s 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 millions 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. fishelsont is a true bacterium. Indeed, when the organism was discovered in 1985 by Israelf re- searchers who found it in the intes- tinal tract of common brown sur- geonfish living in the Red Sea, they thought it must be an alga, protozo- an or other eukaryote. , More recently, Kendall D. Clem- ents of James Cook University in traordinary dimensions, the orga i8in’s genes bore all the earmarks ‘a bacterium. The report of the gia -elsoni, ‘appears today in the Britt urnal Nature. Baylor College of Medicine in Hot ‘ton, who has long studied bacter “ genetics. “The old way of defining bacterium was to look under an See BACTERIA, 15A, Col. Approved FREREIGise SHUM CHAT DRG E HU 7B aRtnséi0540002-9 cellular organization for swift move- ment af nutrients and oxvden inside caught around the Great Barrier Reef of Austrafta.