Approved For Release 2000/08/10 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO3900550002-8
T - 0 R - A L L
THE StN.
THURSDAY, MARCH 18,1993 - VOLUME 312, NUMBER 105 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND HOME DELIVERY: 25t
          en. sized creature found to bebiggdst germ
4
3y Natahe Anoer Naked eye able to'see single-celled giant
iew Yorknmes News Service
Flouting the scientific canon that eth of an Inch In length and possess-
X ba
     .,,9teria are microsco c, re- Ing a volume a million times that of
earcfi~ ~"-'~"'ihe common E. coll microbe, the
rs gave discovered .~
     .O,b_%p,,that It can 1)6'seelh with the newly discovered bacterium seems to
     iaked eye. defy laws of biology that limit how
     The single-Pei'le'a ".organism, big a simple bacterial cell can grow.
     )luck6d from the boweli of an Aus- So outsized is the creature that
     ralian fish, is about the size of a researchers may soon be able to use
     iyphen In a newspaper, making It it to begin exploring the'intimate de
     )y far the largest bacterium ever de- tails of bacterial innards, a task im
     ected. possible with the tinier species of mi
     In measuring more than one-fifti- crobes.
"It's so huge that we could stick
electrodes into it," said Esther R. An-
     in Bloom-,
gert of Indiana University
ington. "There's a world of cell physi-
ology that could be done with this
thing.- .
The researcher, who Is finishing
her doctorate In the laboratory of Dr.
Norman Pace, performed the experi-
ments that demonstrated the., bacte-
rial nature of the beast,
She showed that despite Its ex-
     traond.Ifiary dimensions, the orga
     lgrn'sg6nes bore all the earmarks
     .a bacterium. The report of the gia.
     bacterium; call Epulopiseturn fis
     ed
el
, soni. -appears today in the Britt
journal Nature.
     , "I think It's incredibly excitt:
     and it's an extremely convincing p
     -per,'-sald Dr. James R. Lupski
Baylor College of Medicine in HoL
ton, who has long studiedbacter
genetics. 'The old way of defining
bacterium was to look under a r
See BACTERIA, 15A, Col.
                                   Hyphen-sized blob found
Afa
to be world's biggest gurm
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 bacterl-
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 Wieved that
  actcda. .5
Approved Qrt
        In
arnd
cellular organization for swift move-
~f nf -trientq nnd oxwren 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. flshelsont 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
, it,"AP(effhM0550002-8
CY&--ftft,"
 Ummrl
caught around the Great Barrier
Reef of Australia.