
When Two Bacteria Become One - vo2maxer
https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2020/september/eleftherios-papoutsakis-bacterial-fusion/
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sradman
The paper _Interspecies Microbial Fusion and Large-Scale Exchange of
Cytoplasmic Proteins and RNA in a Syntrophic Clostridium Coculture_ [1]:

> Here, transmission electron microscopy and electron tomography demonstrated
> cell wall and membrane fusions between the two organisms, whereby C.
> ljungdahlii appears to invade C. acetobutylicum pole to pole.

Hopefully this gives insight into the mechanism underlying symbiogenesis [2]
that influenced the evolution of life. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are the
most important examples of symbiogenesis.

[1]
[https://mbio.asm.org/content/11/5/e02030-20](https://mbio.asm.org/content/11/5/e02030-20)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis)

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anitil
For anyone interested in this sort of thing, I would recommend a Youtube
channel called 'Journey To The Microcosmos' hosted by Hank Green.

This world is so bizarre it defies belief

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throwaway_pdp09
O'Rlly? :)

Try this [https://www.quantamagazine.org/extra-dna-may-make-
unlikely-h...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/extra-dna-may-make-unlikely-
hybrid-fish-possible-20200805/)

“I’m still confused. My jaw is still on the floor,” said Prosanta Chakrabarty,
an ichthyologist at Louisiana State University and the curator of fishes at
its Museum of Natural Science. “It’s like if they had a cow and a giraffe make
a baby.” Then he quickly corrected himself, because the lineages of those two
ruminants split only a few dozen million years ago. The evolutionary paths of
paddlefish and sturgeons diverged 184 million years ago. For those fish to
breed is more like “if a human came out of a platypus egg,” he said.

I think this may be the weirder.

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Angostura
This feels very much like a prototypical version of sex with two 'haploid'
cells merging to form a 'diploid'.

It's not _quite_ clear from the article what happens to these merged cells in
the long-run. Do they continue to reproduce, forming effectively a new species
of bacterium?

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throwaway_pdp09
"The team found that C. ljungdahlii invades C. acetobutylicum. The two
organisms combine cell walls and membranes and exchange proteins and RNA to
form hybrid cells, some of which continue to divide and in fact differentiate
into the characteristic sporulation program"

I read that as saying the new chimera (...?) is viable.

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Angostura
Yes, but it skirts a bit - do the resultant spores produce new members of the
combined organism, or do they segregate back into the parent species?

It feels like, maybe the latter

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throwaway_pdp09
Given "and RNA to form hybrid cells" it would be hard to see them
unhybridising; would that even be possible once you've mixed up so much? So I
read the former where you read the latter, but it needs clarifying doesn't it.

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pvaldes
Two species from the same genus meet and a new hybrid species has born.
Species split and fuse all the time since the earth is the earth.

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throwaway_pdp09
That's not what the article is describing.

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pvaldes
The concept of bacterial conjugation is know since 1946

And things can turn much weirder than what the article is showing...

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throwaway_pdp09
Interesting - please continue...

