A tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

https://grist.org/science/nitrogen-cycle-cell-discovery-nitroplast-science-fertilizer-algae-bacteria/

by gumby • 13 days ago

159 26 13 days ago

grist.org

ahazred8ta• 13 days ago

A 20 year search leads to the discovery of the nitroplast, a nitrogen-fixing organelle hiding inside algae.

ninju• 8 days ago

Kudos to the scientists everywhere that continue to explore the mysteries of nature

whitten• 8 days ago

Since computational biology is all about simulation, do the chloroplast, the mitochondria, and now the nitro-last, have definitions that could be actively simulated ?

dekhn• 8 days ago

Practically speaking, while we could simulate them at a fairly approximate level, it wouldn't really tell us anything useful.

chasil• 8 days ago

The plastid wiki might be germane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastid

Edit: "It was a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. Hagino fondly just calls it Bigelowii."

Is this pronounced bigggie-lowie?

bradrn• 8 days ago

It’s presumably named after Henry Bigelow (like several other things in oceanography), so my guess would be /bɪɡəˈlə͡ʊwi.a͡ɪ/.

golem14• 8 days ago

Yes, but based on parent's comment, they will now live forever in my head as Biggie-Lowies.

imzadi• 8 days ago

This is a nicely written article, which feels like a rarity lately.

jjtheblunt• 8 days ago

was just thinking the same: it's so refreshingly well written (!)

pixel_popping2• 8 days ago

it's a new model, human-sol-ultra, highly advisable to use in loops.

gumby• 8 days ago

It’s a cool model but the training is so slow it feels like years!

phatskat• 8 days ago

Indeed this was a pleasure to read!

For someone who’s biology schooling largely culminated in a high school presentation of “how a virus works” rendered in a pirated copy of 3DS Max, it felt both accessible and informative without coming off as boring - actually I’m quite excited about the possibilities of continued research.

The fact that Hagino’s boss considered her research a waste of time, and both her and Zehr’s comments on unexpected results from seemingly banal work, tangentially makes me think of how UBI and science aren’t often mentioned together. But, there are people who, given their basic needs met, would happily throw their free time at the pursuit of science.

Last thought - I’m typing this on mobile and needed to look up the researchers’ names again. A quick google of “nitroplast” returned some top results that seemed like decent write ups but one didn’t mention either of them (nor the third researcher mentioned, Coale), and I realized that tying this article to a more human level really felt _good_. I think that it’s easy for articles about science to disregard that element - and to be fair, Nitroplast is more than these three people - but this form of writing and the way the journey was delivered felt really quite nice.

HarHarVeryFunny2• 8 days ago

Fantastic - the nitroplast joining a pretty exclusive club there.

Bigelowii itself seems very interesting, even without this nitrogen fixing organelle, having two completely different phases to it's life - one in a weird dodecahedral calcareous shell and one without as a mobile flagellate. Apparently it can exist and reproduce in either form, and occasionally switch forms. It took scientists a long while to realize the two forms are actually the same species.

egiboy• 8 days ago

Two phases of Bigelowii.

Deuce Bigelowii.

Huh.

HarHarVeryFunny2• 8 days ago

Damn! :)

winnit• 8 days ago

Bigelowii 2: Electric Boogaloo

m3047• 8 days ago

CO2, you say? Human activity produces tens of percent of the bioavailable nitrogen.

Terr_• 8 days ago

A facile comparison: the problem with CO2 involves the equilibrium level (or lack thereof) between the flows of what is emitted to the pool versus removed.

In contrast, excessive bio-available nitrogen is unlikely to build up, not when most of the biosphere is waiting to grab it and (relatively quickly) turn it back into inert N2 gas.

pravetz259• 8 days ago

I'm skeptical of the "magic noodles" bit as mentioned in the article.

The "tokoroten" noodles are just agar.

Pretty much everyone in biology tries growing cells in agar, right? Surely that can't have been an amazing discovery?

poizan42• 8 days ago

Maybe there is something else in Gelidium amansii that it needs, if the tokoroten was produced in the traditional way?

colingauvin• 8 days ago

I've had cells growing fine in 20 L Cytiva wave bags and then fail to grow in 20 L Sartorius wave bags. Anyone that tells you they know how a cell grows is lying to themselves :)

applicative• 8 days ago

The recent paper in explicitly discusses the matter "The prepared tokoroten was frozen at −20C, then thawed at room temperature. The thawed tokoroten separated into agar and liquid parts naturally,... " https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00318884.2026.26...

momojo• 8 days ago

I got chills reading this. The last time I felt this way was reading "Project Hail Mary" and that was for a fictional cell!

It's crazy to me that we are still discovering these microscopic yet crucial parts of nature around us.

gregdaniels421• 8 days ago

Azolla which at one point maybe caused an iceage is freshwater only and a symbiotic organism with a cyanobacteria, and the bacteria can't tolerate salt, maybe there is something cool we could do with nitroplasts to improve sea vegetation to reduce CO2

tzs• 8 days ago

The only organisms that can actually pull this off are ones that can get by without oxygen: super simple bacteria and archaea. That means the entire natural world relies on a relatively small number of microscopic species to make nitrogen usable by more complex forms of life.

I remember reading that this was a significant factor in why people were so alarmed over DDT. It had not been anticipated how widely it would spread beyond the places it was intentionally used and how it would persist. It ended up in almost all ecosystems, full of life it had never been tested on.

If it had turned out to kill many of those small number of microscopic species that almost all plant and animal life relies on we could have been royally screwed.

That obviously turned out not to be the case with DDT, but it made people realize that we had to be a lot more careful when designing and testing pesticides than we had been.

A tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

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