
Parasite Is Really a Micro-Jellyfish - kungfudoi
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parasite-really-micro-jellyfish-180957326/?no-ist
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pvaldes
This is a, not new but very interesting, theory that appeared first time in
'Nature' in the late 90's if I remember correctly. The theory received more
support later. In retrospective, is easy to make the conection when you see it
the first time, but nobody knew it before. This was a really shocking idea for
many or us.

Myxozoans are mysterious aquatic organisms causing serious mortality in fishes
and millionary economic damages sometimes. They have a very complex life cycle
with multinucleated plasmodia, sporoblast phases and two different types of
spores, one for attacking worms and other for fishes.

Only one type of spores have the polar capsules, and they are exacty like
nematocysts. At microscope you can see the coiled filaments inside, easily
fired with urea in lab. They are used in host atachment before to release a
motile ameboid form.

A similar history happened also with the similar Microspora, a classic phylum
of protozoans parasites of animals, currently in fungi.

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mcguire
" _Myxozoans still have a complex structure that looks like the stinging cells
of jellyfish, called a nematocyst, that Cartwright calls 'little firing
weapons.'_"

So, what do they use the nematocysts for?

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guard-of-terra
Why do they wonder so much after that tasmanian devil's cancer? There you have
a contagious disease that's not bacteria or virus but canine.

There's also a culture of some woman's cells that is used for I don't remember
what. Makes it a new genus of Homo!

Or not. I think we can conclude that genetic similarity is not everything and
such derivates should be considered separatrely.

~~~
Retric
Hela cells are don't actually closely match human cells any more. Genetically
chimps are much closer to humans than that cell line.
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/famous-hela-
human-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/famous-hela-human-cell-
line-gets-its-dna-sequenced/)

"Steinmetz’s team confirmed that HeLa cells contain one extra version of most
chromosomes, with up to five copies of some. Many genes were duplicated even
more extensively, with four, five or six copies sometimes present, instead of
the usual two. Furthermore, large segments of chromosome 11 and several other
chromosomes were reshuffled like a deck of cards, drastically altering the
arrangement of the genes"

