So, there is this young student, Yana Eglit, a Ph.D. student at Simpson Lab, Dalhousie University, in Hallifax, Canada. She goes on a picnic/hike with friends, and picks up some random dirt samples:
"The hemimastigotes [...] were found by Eglit during a spring hike with some other students along the Bluff Wilderness Trail outside Halifax a couple of years ago. She often has empty sample vials in her pockets or bags, and scooped a few tablespoons of dirt into one of them from the side of the trail."
This is the best part of the story, maybe besides their final observations; Ms. Eglit takes empty sample vials with her when she goes hiking!
She then "back at the lab, soaked the soil in water, which often revives microbes that have gone dormant, waiting for the next big rainstorm. Over the next few weeks, she checked on the dish through a microscope to see what might be swimming around." This was few years later, and is the second best part of the story, besides the fact that they have discovered a new branch of life; she pulled the samples years later to take a look.
When she observed some strange behavior. "It's as if these cells never really learned that they have many flagella," Eglit said with a laugh. She had seen something with that strange motion once before, a few years ago, and recognized it as a rare hemimastigote." This is the third best thing about this story; she was building on previous scientific research/knowledge.
Then, "realizing that she had something very rare and special, Eglit flagged another graduate student Gordon Lax, who specializes in genetic analyses of individual microbes — a new and tricky technique — to see where they fit in the evolutionary tree. The pair dropped everything to analyze the new microbe." And, the fourth best thing about this news; she quickly find another researcher to help her and they collaborated. This is the advantage of having a scientific laboratory (and scientific community) where scientists can work together.
And, then they realized that they have identified a new species that do not belong to known branches of the tree of life. The final manuscript involves 6 researchers and three different labs.
Science (and scientific methods) works!
Read the details here. And, make sure you listen to the audio at the end of the article where Biology professor Alastair Simpson and Mainstreet host Bob Murphy discuss this news in detail.
Related articles:
Related Links:
- Simpson Lab
- Manuscript at Nature: Hemimastigophora is a novel supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes, Gordon Lax, Yana Eglit, Laura Eme, Erin M. Bertrand, Andrew J. Roger & Alastair G. B. Simpson
