Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00789ROO3900560002-7
_777 h__-r_. 6-
THE SUN,
THURSDAY, MARCH 18,1993 VOLUME 312. NUMBER 105 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND HOME DELIVERY: 25@
Hv own - 1Z eature found to bebiggdst
Ph%O*.L& S* ed -cr germ
3y Natalle A4er
4ew York Times News Service
Naked eye able to see
Flouting the scientific canon that eth of an Inch in length and possess-
4 ng a volume a millio
dl baCtCIfa are microscopic n times that of
,earcATM__FAve discovered WTff51[h::_ the common E. colt microbe, the
,_o-_hjV1na it cdfi-15F_@e_en wRY, ffi-e
TWeye.
T te_- c-eTelf--org a n I s m,
Me e weso
?I m - f an Aus-
n s , is about the size of a
i' hen in a newspaper, making It
)y far the larg@st bacterium ever de-
ected.
In measuring more than one-fifti-
newly discovered bacterium seems to
defy laws of biology that limit how
big a simple bacterial cell can grow,
So outsized Is the creature that
researchers may soon be able to use
It to begin exploring the'intimate de-
tails of bacterial Innards, a task Im-
possible with the tinier species of mi-
crobes.
single-celled 9 jalit . traoridifiary dimensions, the orgai
igm'i genes.bore all the earmarks i
	a bacterium. The report of the glai
"It's so huge that we could stick	bact@rlurni,called Epulopisclum fisl
electrodes into it," said Esther R. An-.-	elsont, appears today In the Britisc
gert of Indiana University in Bloom-,	journal Nature.
Ington. "There's a world of cell physi-	, *1 think It's incredibly excitir
ology that could be done with this	and it's an extremely convincing p
thing	.* -	.per,'-sald Dr. James R. Lupski i
T	he researcher, who Is finishing	- Baylor College of Medicine in Hou
her doctorate in the laboratory of Dr.	ton, who has long studied bacterl;
Norman Pace, performed the.experl-	genetics. 'The old way of defining
ments that demonstrated the@bacte-	bacterium was to look under a m
rial nature of the beast.	
She showed that despite Its ex-	See BACTERIA. 15A, Col.
Hyphen-sized blob found
to be world's biaFL:Fest eferm
(ZA::7 9c;
Naked eye able
to see creature
BACTERIA, from I A
croscope, see what size it was and
whether It stained one way or anoth-
er. Now we're redefining life forms
based on what kind of DNA they
have."
Commanding though the bacteri-
um is,, It may not be the world's larg-
est.
Realizing that bacteria have the
ability to grow beyond boundaries
previously set for them, scientists
may well find other examples of sin-
gle-celled beings with macroscopic
aspirations.
"This type of study points to how
little we know about microbial diver-
sity," Ms. Angert said. "Here's this
huge organism that seems to be a
significant part of a fish's intestines,
and it's just recently been discov-
ered. Who can say what else is out
there waiting to be found?"
Scientists have long believed that
cellular organization for swift move-
ment of nutrients and oxygen Inside
them. must rely on slow diffusion to
wrest what they need from their sur-
roundings. So they must remain very
tiny to allow essential molecules to
drift from one part of the cell to an-
other.
By comparison, the cells of higher
organisms, such as yeast, algae, In-
sects and humans. are eukaryotes
and have small internal structures to
ferry molecules about.
Pulverizing the genetic material
from the bacteria, th6 researchers
multiplied the DNA Into millions of
copies through the use of a technique
called polymerase chain reaction.
They next compared the genes
with those from many other known
prokaryotes and eukaryotes and
demonstrated that E. f1shelsoni Is a
true bacterium.
Indeed, when the organism was
discovered in 1985 by Israeli re-
searchers who found it In the Intes-
tinal tract of common brown sur-
geonfish living In the Red Sea, they
thought It must be an alga, protozo-
an or other eukaryote.
More recently, Kendall D. Clem-
ents of James Cook University in
caught around, the Great Barrier
Reef of Australia.