"This episode of DNews is brought to you by the all-new G Flex 2, from LG.
Life's Good"
The bumblebee bat is very tiny only an inch long, but that’s still pretty big as far
as life goes.
To find to the earth’s smallest living things, we’re gonna have to look a little bit harder.
Hey guys, Julia here for Dnews
How small can life get?
Well bats and humans come from the Domain Eukarya.
the smallest member of our domain?
Prasinophyte algae.
A single cell of which can be 800 nanometers across.
But that’s still kinda large for life.
Microorganisms from the Domains Archaea and Bacteria exist on an unimaginably tiny scale.
How small is small?
well pretty dang small according to new research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
and the University of California, Berkeley.
The researchers captured the first detailed microscopy images of Ultra-small bacteria
that are so tiny, 150-thousand of them could fit within the width of a human hair.
The researchers think these ultra-small bacteria are the smallest life can get at an average
volume of 9 cubic nanometers.
So Yeah, tiny.
So where do they come from?
Well probably everywhere.
This sample was scooped from ground water in Colorado, but the researchers think they
are quite common.
Using high-tech microscopy imaging they found that they’re pretty simple organisms.
The cells have densely packed spirals that are probably DNA, and not very much of it.
Their genomes are about one million base pairs in length.
In comparison we have about 3 billion base pairs in our genome.
Their small genome leaves them without many vital functions.
So maybe their hair-like appendages are like a kind of “life support system” that connects
them to other microbes.
This new discovery could unseat the previous candidate for smallest living thing.
Mycoplasm gallicepticum, a parasitic bacterium that lives in the guts of primates, can be
around 200 nanometers across.
Which fit with what researchers thought was the minimum size required for a free-living
cell to well... live.
Scientists haven’t really agreed how small life can get but researchers at a workshop
hosted by the National Academy of Sciences theorized that a cell must be at least 200
nanometers across otherwise it couldn't fit stuff like DNA and proteins that are kind
of needed to live and reproduce.
Looking at another Domain, Archaea are simple single-celled microbes that get pretty tiny
too.
Research from some of the same team from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley found
Archaea also with a cell volume of 9 cubic nanometers.
And in case you were wondering about viruses - Viruses are really freaking small, some
can be only 20 nanometers across.
But they aren’t considered living since they need hosts to reproduce.
They exist in a half-alive, grey area.
So they don’t really count.
Switching gears to a more human scale, we are really happy that our new channel Seeker
launched this week!
Here on DNews, we take a look at the news from a science angle, and they take a look
at the news from a human side!
Like this video here about a teenager that built a braille printer out of Legos...
So make sure you check that video out, it’s the first link in the description, and subscribe
to Seeker so you never miss a video!