• EvolvedTurtle@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Hey can someone summarize this into lame man terms

    What I’ve got is New organelle which evolved from a separate organism similar to mitochondria and it allows alga to process nitrogen

    Is that right? And what does this mean for the ecosystem

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      It means they can fertilize themselves, removing the one thing plants can’t do on their own.

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      This is exactly right. The alga has one more organelle that originated as a bacterial symbiont, just like mitochondria and chloroplasts, which is super cool! The alga, Braarudosphaera bigelowii, is a coccolithophore, which is very cool by itself. They are important part of the carbon cycle. And they look supercool - they are covered in calcareous scales and this species is shaped like a dodecahedron!!! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Braarudosphaera_bigelowii.jpg

    • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Yes. It is very exciting and cool. It already has mitochondria so it’s actually a double endosymbiont if it gets confirmed by others.

        • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Not in the paper data at least. It does have plastids which I had to look up (been a while since gen bio). Plastids are similar to chloroplasts. So triple endosymbiont actually. Again if data holds to further scrutiny.

          • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            I think plastid is the generic term for that organelle family and chloroplasts are plastids specialized for photosynthesis.
            So they probably don’t want to state the plastids have a function they havent confirmed or something like that

            • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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              7 months ago

              You are correct about the definitions but I’d imagine chloroplasts have some relatively standard assays which would have been tried, though this isn’t really my area of expertise.

  • Match!!
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    7 months ago

    mouth agape, pointing to the background

  • AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    Man, assuming I understand this properly, if they had more time to evolve and adapt this on masse we could see some improvements to the marine ecosystem!