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Caption
Bacteria are the dominant form of life that inhabit every available environment on Earth. This includes human bodies, where they outnumber our cells and genes, and regulate our existence for good and bad. Bacteria are regularly viewed as simple single-celled organisms. As bacteria are ancient, it is also widely accepted that a bacteria-like unicellular being was the first life. However, a recent work published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by an international research team challenges these long held views.
In this study the researchers took evolutionary tools to study the growth of biofilms, the most common bacterial lifestyle characterized by the tight clustering of bacterial cells on surfaces. Surprisingly, they found that the development of bacterial biofilms is comparable to animal embryogenesis. This means that bacteria are true multicellular organisms just like we are. Considering that the oldest known fossils are bacterial biofilms, it is quite likely that the first life was also multicellular, and not a single-celled creature as considered so far, explain the researchers in their study. The video shows Bacillus growth mirroring the embryonic development.
Credit
Dr Momir Futo, postdoctoral researcher, Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Rudjer Boskovi? Institute