[Jim Robinson]

I think I ate one of those once in a Sushi bar.

[nuconvert]

pong

[martin_fierro]

It's FRANKENPLANT!

[blam]

"I think the discovery of the 'half-animal, half-plant' microbe shows part of the process of single-cell marine microbes evolving into plants."

I would have guessed the other way round.

[Doctor Stochastic]

cells! eat algae, like animals
cells eat algae, like animals
cells eat; algae like animals
cells eat algae-like animals

Pitcher plants and Venus Fly Traps also eat animals.

[Skywarner]

"A mysterious marine microbe, half of whose individual cells eat algae like animals while the rest perform photosynthesis like plants, has been discovered, a University of Tsukuba research team said."

Why are the Japanese talking about Michael Moore?!?

[Conservative Firster]

"half-animal, half-plant"

Kill it now!

[NonLinear]

Interesting...

[glock rocks]

Interesting. I was fascinated by diatoms in biology... one celled algae that actively swim around in glass shells.

[TheCrusader]

How long before somebody calls it the 'missing link' of evolution.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

[smoothsailing]

This would explain Al Gore.

Lotsa folks here thought he was a tree, but I always knew there was something fishy about him.

[AdmSmith]

A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress?
Noriko Okamoto and Isao Inouye

Algae have acquired plastids by developing an endosymbiotic relationship with either a cyanobacterium (primary endosymbiosis) or other eukaryotic algae (secondary endosymbiosis). We report a protist, which we tentatively refer to as Hatena, that hosts an endosymbiotic green algal partner but inherits it unevenly. The endosymbiosis causes drastic morphological changes to both the symbiont and the host cell architecture. This type of life cycle, in which endosymbiont integration has only partially converted the host from predator to autotroph, may represent an early stage of plastid acquisition through secondary symbiosis.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5746/287


Nice, maybe it was a similar transition period when the mitochondrion was incorporated into the eukaryotic cell.

[Lancey Howard]

[Havoc]

Oh good grief. [moronicism alert]

[HP8753]

At least it explains Helen Thomas.....

Half Stinkweed and half Sigmund the Sea Monster.

[Itzlzha]

"I think the discovery of the 'half-animal, half-plant' microbe shows part of the process of single-cell marine microbes evolving into plants," Prof. Isao Inoue, a member of the research team, said.

Animacules!

[toddlintown]

Godzilla?

[RightWingAtheist]

Kent Hovinid reacts to news of a living transitional species existing between two phylums: