dziwne-zwierzęta-oceaniczne: Smallest organisms

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The smallest organisms found on Earth can be determined according to various aspects of organism size, including volume, mass, height, length, or genome size. Given the incomplete nature of scientific knowledge, it is likely that the smallest organism is undiscovered. Furthermore, there is some debate over the definition of life, and what entities qualify as organisms; consequently the smallest known organisms (microrganisms) may be archaea that can be 200 nanometers long.

Evidence: — • authority: 92

The Maximum Growth Temperature for Eukaryotes Is Thermodynamically Driven but Ecologically Contingent.. Temperature is a state variable that affects all life. While it is known that archaea can grow at 120 °C and many bacteria can grow at over 100 °C, no eukaryote is known to complete a life cycle at above 65 °C. This paper explores why the difference in the maximum temperature of eukaryotes and other kingdoms of life might occur. It finds that chemical and genome structural differences between the domains of life are unlikely to explain the difference in maximum growth temperature, with the exception of the Saccharomycotina, which are different from other fungi, possibly because of their u…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Rhizomal Reclassification of Living Organisms.. Living organisms interact with each other during their lifetime, leading to genomes rearrangement and sequences transfer. These well-known phenomena give these organisms mosaic genomes, which challenge their classification. Moreover, many findings occurred between the IXXth and XXIst century, especially the discovery of giant viruses and candidate phyla radiation (CPR). Here, we tried to provide an updated classification, which integrates 216 representative genomes of the current described organisms. The reclassification was expressed through a genetic network based on the total genomic content, not on a single gene to represent the tree of li…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Functional fibrillar interfaces: Biological hair as inspiration across scales.. Hair, or hair-like fibrillar structures, are ubiquitous in biology, from fur on the bodies of mammals, over trichomes of plants, to the mastigonemes on the flagella of single-celled organisms. While these long and slender protuberances are passive, they are multifunctional and help to mediate interactions with the environment. They provide thermal insulation, sensory information, reversible adhesion, and surface modulation (e.g., superhydrophobicity). This review will present various functions that biological hairs have been discovered to carry out, with the hairs spanning across six orders of magnitude in size,…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

"Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile" (provisional name) is a species of archaea of which only the DNA is known, but which already presents several particularities: it is a holoparasite of the dinoflagellate Citharistes regius. Its DNA, the smallest known for an archaeon, codes only for proteins necessary for reproduction.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

This is a list of the longest-living biological organisms: the individuals or clones of a species with the longest natural maximum life spans. For a given species, such a designation may include: The oldest known individual(s) that are currently alive, with verified ages. Verified individual record holders, such as the longest-lived human, Jeanne Calment, or the longest-lived domestic cat, Creme Puff. The definition of "longest-living" used in this article considers only the observed or estimated length of an individual organism's natural lifespan – that is, the duration of time between its birth or conception (or the earliest emergence of its identity as an individual organism) and its dea…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

A nanobe () is a tiny filamental structure that was found in some rocks and sediments by a research team in 1996. When they were discovered, some scientists hypothesized that nanobes were the smallest form of life. However, after the original research was published in 1998, no further research reports have been published about nanobes. They are one-tenth the size of the smallest known bacteria. There is no conclusive evidence that these structures are living organisms. The 1996 discovery of nanobes was published in 1998 by Uwins et al., from the University of Queensland, Australia. They were found in rock samples (both full-diameter and sidewall cores) of Jurassic and Triassic sandstones, o…