Science & technology | A giant bacterium

The biggest bacterium yet discovered lives on Guadeloupe

It can grow to be a centimetre long

CAPTIONSingle filament of Ca. Thiomargarita magnifica. This image is associated with a June 2022 Science paper about a giant single-celled bacterium found in the mangroves of Guadeloupe titled, "A centimeter-long bacterium with DNA contained in metabolically active membrane-bound organelles."CREDITJean-Marie Volland

Jun 23rd 2022

At a full centimetre long, this is the largest species of bacterium yet discovered. It was found in a mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe by Jean-Marie Volland of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, and his colleagues. They have dubbed it Thiomargarita magnifica in a paper just published in Science. To supply its elongated body with appropriate biomolecules, it contains half a million copies of the circular dna molecules that constitute its genome, each doing its thing locally to keep the organism alive.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “It can grow to be a centimetre long”