Largest bacterium ever discovered has unexpectedly complex cells
science.org
science.org
> 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.
The study[0] however speaks of "cells" in plural, and "daughter cells". It would've really surprised me if that really had been a single cell - unless I'm misunderstanding something here.
edit: I stand corrected. Misunderstood it.
[0] from other comment: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.16.480423v1....
The article explains that the huge size for a bacteria seems to be enabled by 2 features, first a large water-filled vesicle inside, so that the living part of the cell is around the periphery of the cell, within short distances from the cell membrane, and second, a special compartment for DNA which provides some of the functions of a nucleus in an eukaryote (nucleate) cell.
> Strikingly, all techniques consistently showed that each filament was one continuous cell for nearly its entire length with no division septa, including the partial constrictions towards the apical pole. Only the most apical few buds were separated from the filament by a closed constriction and represented daughter cells
"Apical" means the apex of the filament. In other words, toward the end of the filament the cell starts pinching off ("budding") to create daughter cells as part of its reproductive cycle. But the away from the end, the cell is contiguous. Fig. S2 is highly recommended.
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valonia_ventricosa#Physiology_...
> Furthermore, that cell includes two membrane sacs, one of which contains all the cell’s DNA, Volland and colleagues report in their 18 February preprint on bioRxiv. Volland calls that sac an organelle and that’s “a big new step” that implies the two branches of life are not as different as previously thought, Carvalho says. “Perhaps it’s time to rethink our definition of eukaryote and prokaryote!” agrees Petra Levin, a microbiologist at Washington University in St Louis. “It’s a supercool story.”
IMO, they really buried the lede on this one by focusing on the size of the bacterium and not on the convergent evolution of an apparent nucleus in a prokaryote.
The bactarium shown in the video looks very similar to what people describe.
My understanding is that morgellons is largely seen as psychosomatic or "fake". I now wonder if some people might have similar bacteria on them and that it might explain some of the symptoms.
If this were the cause of morgellons then their result would be "morgellons caused by infestation with unknown large bacteria" not "people with morgellons have no physical evidence of infestation".
It emerged from an odd nexus of Munchausens, Munchausens by proxy, internet diagnosis and schizophrenia. So it's not "fake" but it might be faked.
Morgellons is a really fascinating mini model of Qanon, in a way; it now "exists" as a "thing" that has to be discussed, even though it doesn't exist as a thing.
In "Munchhausen's" people seek suffering to get help, to oversimplify by a few magnitudes. But it's really not the same thing.
And QAnon-followers are in their majority not suffering from psychotic delusions.
It's possible for things to exist in a nexus between opposites, is it not? Morgellons is something that people only ever "have" if they go looking for it. Self-diagnosis of extreme, rare, "special" diseases that rational people disbelieve, and Munchausens are not that far apart, surely.
> And QAnon-followers are in their majority not suffering from psychotic delusions.
I didn't say that -- or mean it. [0]
What I said was that the emergence of Morgellons -- an internet phenomenon -- is a small model of what later happened with QAnon. Both are non-true, at leas partly fabricated, online phenomena, that simultaneously do not exist and cannot be ignored.
The problem comes when you have a bunch of people who are scientifically ignorant, predisposed towards a simple belief that explains things for them, and several bad faith actors (in QAnon's case, Cernovich and the Watkins family, in the Morgellons case, the Morgellons Research Foundation and several blogs). What you end up with is a self-reinforcing bubble of belief around a fallacy that cannot then be ignored, like scar tissue around a tiny fragment of talc.
[0] That said, there are for certain delusional aspects of QAnon. It has a Millerite nature and is also spawning even more fringe cults like the JFK reincarnation faction; it absolutely is unpicking people's control over their psychoses, as can be seen from the January 6 defendants.
You have written elsewhere that "Morgellons is something that people only ever "have" if they go looking for it."
My experience with the concept is similar to that, but different. I first heard about it in the context of a building that had what is now called "sick building syndrome." In short, a combination of poor air circulation, bathrooms that weren't properly ventilated on the outside, and an HVAC system that hadn't been cleaned in over a decade.
People were unknowingly sick, but had nothing to show for it except the odd particle found on their skin. So the logical people did what logical people do and looked for an answer. Some went to dermatologists who only gave the answer "there are signs of an unknown infection" and provided creams. For some, this is enough to move on. While others need the exact answer to find peace. So there you have it, a bunch of educated people on search engines writing "redness on the skin with dust particles", "infection only in one room", "small itchy filaments on the skin", etc. Soon enough, "Morgellons" appeared in the results and was the topic of conversation.
Now obliviously it wasn't "Morgellons". Air quality tests were performed and revealed the presence of spores, which led to the discovery that the bathroom vent was not properly installed and that the HVAC system was long overdue for cleaning.
However, if these tests had not been performed and the building owner had not been cooperative, you would have a large group of engineers believing in Morgellons, as that was the only "logical" explanation at the time.
This brings us back to my question, "I wonder if this might have something to do with what people call Morgellon's disease." Not necessarily as an explanation of Morgellons but as an explanation of some of the reported symptoms. If I had on my body the exact same bacteria as the one in the short video of the article and went to a search engine to find the answer, I would very likely fall on Morgellon's disease.
It's entirely possible that 100% of the people who claim to have seen filaments moving on their skin were imagining things, that they all have a mental health issue.
But coming from a fibromyalgia household where the women in my family were led to believe their illness was imaginary ("female hysteria") for decades, some of them wasting years on powerful antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, I am very wary of dismissing self-reported symptoms as psychosomatic.
I'm glad they are getting help.
(Also good job with the HVAC and the building; an unprovably unpleasant environment can mess with people's lives)
But it's worth noting as others have that Morgellons is based on a specific claim (strange microscopic growths out of the skin) that is testable. The things that sufferers/believers think are their disease turn out to be cellulose in nature. In other words, cotton microfibres.
[0] https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/creatura-blog/...