Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Picozoans Are Algae After All

Amazing stuff! Only discovered in 2007! Science is full of human mistakes and follies!

"Picozoans have puzzled scientists ever since their surprising discovery almost 15 years ago. These common, globally distributed microbes are barely bigger than bacteria, yet they’re members of the same domain as animals, fungi, and plants, and everything from what they eat to where they fit into the eukaryotic tree of life has proven difficult to pin down.  ...
No one thought that there were major lineages of algae awaiting discovery in the 21st century, he says. Yet, there these organisms were—overlooked because they slipped right through the three-micron filters often used to separate larger eukaryotic microbes such as algae and zooplankton from bacteria. ..."

"... The position of Picozoa in the eukaryotic tree represents the first known case of a plastid-lacking lineage closely related to one of the main archaeplastid branches. The implications of these findings for our understanding of plastid evolution are unprecedented, and can either be interpreted as the first report of complete plastid loss in a free-living taxon, or as an indication that red algae and rhodelphids obtained their plastids independently of other archaeplastids. ..."

Picozoans Are Algae After All: Study | The Scientist Magazine®

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