Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : GIA-RDP96-00789R003900560002-7 THES 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 Jew York Times News Service eth of an inch tn length and ess- Flouting the scientific canon that are microscopic, re-__ing a volume a million times that of ‘eare ave alscousned EAT the common E. coli microbe, the “Du th t it can be seen w newly discovered bacterium seems to eye ~ 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 {t to begin exploring the intimate de- tails of bacterial innards, a task im- possible with the tinler species of mi- crobes. te-celled! “organism, wels of an Aus- is 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- Naked eye able to see single-celled gtant «tee a bacterium, The report of the gia “It's so huge that we could stick -.. -elsoni, appears today in the Britis electrodes into it,” said Esther R. An-- gert of Indiana University in Bloom. . fo ington. “There's a world of cell physi- ~ - ~. and it's'an extremely convincing p: .- per,”-said Dr. James R. Lupski | ology that could be done with this” thing.” 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. 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 bactert- 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 {t's just recently been discov- ered. Who can say what else is out ; there waiting to be found?” | Scientists have th believed that soo a cellular organization for swift move- ment of nutrients and oxygen inside 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. fishelsoni is a true bacterium. Indeed, when the organism was discovered in 1985 by Israeli 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 ORR COP ae Rago OA aR HO2 ught around the Great Barrier Reef of Australia traordiiiary dimensions, the orga! 8 genes bore all the earmarks | bacterium; called Epulopisctum fis! urnal Nature. “| think. it’s incredibly excitir Baylor College of Medicine in Hou ton, who has long studied bacteri ‘genetics, “The old way of defining acterium was to look under a m See BACTERIA, 15A, Col. -7