Advertisement Giant bacteria FIVE THOUSAND times bigger than normal are discovered in a Caribbean mangrove swamp – and they are even visible to the naked eye

Scientists have discovered the world's largest known bacteria, reaching up to one centimetre (0.4-inches) in length.

The species, called Thiomargarita magnifica, was discovered on sunken leaves in the waters of a mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe, Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.

It appears as thin white filaments like vermicelli pasta, and contains microscopic sulphur granules that scatter light, giving it a pearly gleam.

The 'giant' organism is thousands of times larger than most bacteria and can therefore be seen by the naked eye.

Thiomargarita magnifica 'challenges the prevailing view of bacterial cell size' and the assumption that microbes are only visible under a microscope 'It’s 5,000 times bigger than most bacteria,' said Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California.

'To put it into context, it would be like a human encountering another human as tall as Mount Everest.

'We know that it's growing and thriving on top of the sediment of mangrove ecosystem in the Caribbean.

'In terms of metabolism, it does chemosynthesis, which is a process analogous to photosynthesis for plants.'

The organism was originally discovered in 2009 by Olivier Gros from the University of the French Antilles at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

But the find initially did not attract much attention – due to its size, Gros at the time thought it was a fungus.

It took Gros and other researchers five years to find out that the species is actually a bacterium.

Everything is bigger

Thiomargarita magnifica
Its threadlike single cell is visible to the naked eye, growing up to 2 centimeters—as long as a peanut—and 5000 times bigger than many other microbes. What’s more, this giant has a huge genome that’s not free floating inside the cell as in other bacteria, but is instead encased in a membrane, an innovation characteristic of much more complex cells, like those in the human body.

The largest T. magnifica cell Volland found was 2 centimeters tall, but Carvalho thinks that if not trampled, eaten, blown by wind, or washed away by a wave, they could grow even bigger.

The DNA-filled sac, also squished along the inner edge of this bacterium, proved extraordinary as well. When researchers at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute sequenced the DNA inside, they found the genome was huge, with 11 million bases harboring some 11,000 clearly distinguishable genes. Typically, bacterial genomes average about 4 million bases and about 3900 genes.

By labeling the DNA with fluorescent tags, Volland determined the bacterium’s genome was so big because there are more than 500,000 copies of the same stretches of DNA.

https://www.science.org/content/article/largest-bacterium-ever-discovered-has-unexpectedly-complex-cells

smallest bacteria
perhaps Nanoarchaeum equitans
Its cells are only 400 nm in diameter, 580,070 base pairs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoarchaeum_equitans

largest virus

Pandoravirus salinus
500nm wide and 1000nm long

Linear, dsDNA genome of about 2,473k base pairs
https://viralzone.expasy.org/4238

smallest virus
Perhaps this: Porcine circovirus (PCV) are the smallest viruses replicating autonomously in eukaryotic cells,
The DNA sequence for Porcine circovirus type 2 strain MLP-22 is 1726 base pairs long

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