
Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life - tosh
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hemimastigotes-supra-kingdom-1.4715823
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aurizon
The old way was to culture whatever earth you grabbed. The trouble is, most of
it did not grow, although some did. When they perfected high speed sequencing
they could then lyze out all the DNA from all the organisms living there and
sequence and catalog them. They then take all the organisms they could grow
from the same sample (representational sample), and then deduct all those
sequences from the total. That was when they realized that they had only grown
10-15% of all the various organisms. There are hundreds of growth media, all
painstakingly crafted by trial and error to grow particular organisms. Some
organisms only grow by parasitism of others, some by eating others, and thus
will only grow on a special media to fit this. It can take years to craft a
growth medium. To this day we have many organisms that affect mankind that we
can not grow in culture. The amassed sequence data can be analysed to see what
sort of proteins they will grow. They can then try to make them - if they can
- some need chaperone proteins that lead them into their correct folding
pattern. No chaperone protein = no correct fold = wrong activity etc. It is
very hard to 'uncook' the soup that made the amassed sequence data, but you
may be able to identify promising proteins and tag those sequences in the
living bacteria with a fluorescent dye that is taken up by the organism. Shine
the right light on it and that organism will light up and you may be able to
isolate it or hopefully, many of it. Repeat again and again gradually tease
out these new organisms. With number to play with you can try to make them
grow by analyzing their metabolism to see what might feed them and well fed
ones will reproduce.

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tlynchpin
If this is interesting to you, I just started reading "Tangled Tree" [1] which
examines the history of phylogeny and molecular bio and the current state if
the art, I recommend it. I want to go home and read it right now but alas,
work. (lo I'm on HN, but also WFH, modern life It's Complicated..)

[1] [https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004356](https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004356)

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yesenadam
Link to download the original paper in _Nature_ "Hemimastigophora is a novel
supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes":

[http://libgen.io/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1038%2Fs41586-018-070...](http://libgen.io/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1038%2Fs41586-018-0708-8)

A bit of a let-down after "Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of
organism" to read "Hemimastigotes were first seen and described in the 19th
century. ...About 10 species of hemimastigotes have been described over more
than 100 years."

~~~
all2
A description is one thing. What this article describes is a genetic analysis
that places a mystery on the rather broken 'tree of life'.

Basically they solved a long-running mystery, and it turns out to be stranger
than anyone thought.

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emptybits
Interesting stuff. The talk of a new kingdom or supra-kingdom (domain?
empire?) prompted me to see how we currently model the tree of life.
(Something I probably haven't known since elementary school!)

Within the life of some readers here: kingdoms.count() -> 4, 5, 6, 3, 8, 6, 7,
...

Currently, seven kingdoms: _animalia, fungi, plantae, chromista, protozoa,
archaea, bacteria_ [1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_\(biology\))

~~~
Sniffnoy
Note that "domain" has been added on top of "kingdom" for quite some time now;
that's probably why they went with "supra-kingdom", as this division seems to
be above kingdom but below domain (since these creatures are still
eukaryotes).

~~~
kieckerjan
There was some tantalizing evidence that there may be a fourth domain besides
bacteria,archaea and eukaryotes. Was news couple of years ago, but I didn't
hear anything about it since.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20265-biologys-
dark-m...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20265-biologys-dark-matter-
hints-at-fourth-domain-of-life/)

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gsanghera
2 rare organism in a small sample of dirt picked up at whim. Maybe they're not
so rare anymore?

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ChuckMcM
Cool, do they fight tardigrades? :-)

From a science perspective the process of grab some soil and analyze it is
remarkably fruitful. If you have any budding biologists it is always
interesting to do this experiment, one tablespoon of soil in a 1/2 cup of
water, leave covered overnight and then put it under a microscope.

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fromthestart
>It'll be the one time in my lifetime that we find this sort of thing

I wouldn't be so sure. Especially given how recently we've had the technology
to find and analyse these things.

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mooreds
The world is a wild wonderful place. We think we know a lot about it, but
there's so so much we don't know. It's nice to get a reminder of that every so
often.

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bduerst
>Were found in dirt collected on a whim during a hike

I internally thought about dirt as soon as I read the headline. There is so
much biodiversity in soil that is still unknown but goes unobserved due to the
anaerobic nature of the microbes.

I met a grad student who was randomly sequencing whatever nucleotides he could
find in dirt and was finding new sequences all over the place.

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bvxvbxbxb
Archaea are also interesting as they are simple Prokaryotes but lack a
nucleus.

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gitpusher
If this tree gets too many more branches, I doubt she'll last the winter

