Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO3900540002-9
THE SUN,
THURSDAY, MARCH 18,1993 9 VOLUME 312, NUMBER 105 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND HOME DELIVERY: 25t
Ryphen-sized creature found to be.,bi Llgost germ
to'see single-celled giant'.traordifiary dimensions, the
3y Natae Angler
ew york Times News Service
                                                       orga:
Naked eye able
                                           On-i g6nesbore all the earmarks
of the
Flouting the scientific canon that eth of an inch in length and possess-
11 bacteria are m1croscopiF,jc,-,,,,-,1,ing a volume a million times that of
-earclleri gave discovered X-Atraid - the common E. coli microbe, the
..., ge,that itc.an 13-6,secn with the newly discovered bacterium seems to
,Djiu
                   iaked eye. defy laws of biology that limit how
         The single-celled. organism, big a simple bacterial cell can grow.
         .lucked from the bowels of an Aus- So outsized is the creature that
       ralian fish, Is about the size of a researchers may soon be able to use
       .-yphen in a newspaper, making It It to begin exploring the'intimate de
     far the lar&st bacterium ever de- tails of bacterial innards, a task Im
neted, possible with the tinter species of mi
In measuring more than one-fifti- crobes.
                    a bacterium. The
                    report
                    gia
                    

"It's so huge that  bacterium, called
we could stick      Epulopisclum fis
                    

electrodes Into it,"'elsoni,,appears
said Esther R. An-.-today In the Britt
                    

'ert of Indiana Universityjournal Nature.
in Bloom-,          
                    

                    "I think It's Incredibly
"T                  excitij
ington. here's a    
world of cell physt-
                    

ology that could    % and, Ws an extremely
be done with this-  convincing p
                    

thing."             .Per,"-said Dr. James
                    R. Lupski
                    

The researcher, who Baylor College of
Is flnlshlng@       Medicine in Hou
                    

her doctorate in    ton, who has long
the laboratory of   studied bacter
Dr.'                
                    

Norman Pace, performedgenetics. 'The old
the-.txpeti-        way of defintri,
                    

ments that demonstratedbacterium was to
the'bacte-          look under a n
                    

dal nature of the   
beast.              See BACTERIA, 15A.
She showed that despiteCol.
%s ex-              
                    

                              Hyphen-sized blob found.
                           to be world's bi*L59est grienn
(Zxm@p
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-cclled 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
ApprovedTh,00-aps 4940- 2K%Wfitne@s
cellular organization for swift move
--tn(nivtr1ent.qnndnxvVe.n inside
them, must rely on slow diffusion to
wrest what they need from their sur-
roundtngs. 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. fishclsoni 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
  C 99 6V A%'Ab UWAHA0540002-9
caught around the Great Barrier
Reef of Australia.