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Alien-looking termite gut denizens at the SF Exploratorium!

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Seldom do protists show up in public places (as man-made creations; plenty of them thrive happily unseen), especially those who reside where the sun don't shine: the hindgut of wood-eating termites and cockroaches. There, they perform a function glorious for the termite or roach, but often annoying (or devastating) to us -- they digest cellulose from wood. Furthermore, they sustain a thriving ecosystem of various symbiotic bacteria, and loitering protists of uncertain employment (as in, we hardly know what they eat or do). Besides being ecologically and practically interesting, these gut denizens also exhibit some stunningly elaborate morphologies: for example these parabasalid specimens here. Oh, and many of them lack conventional mitochondria, instead relying on reduced and modified forms such as hydrogen-producing hydrogenosomes (which get quickly surrounded by hydrogen-hungry methane-producing archaeans). In short, the termite and roach gut communities are awesome.

Luckily, a sampling of the alien world has been recently unveiled as a permanent exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Kevin Carpenter, a former member of the Keeling Lab (responsible for quite a bit of termite gut research), is notable for being exceptionally skilled with Scanning Electron Microscopy of protists. You can find some images from the exhibit on his site. It appears that the Exploratorium seems to have a live exhibit of termites and their denizens. So if you happen to be in the Bay Area, be aware that there is now a place to pay homage to some of the few eukaryotes who can digest hardly-edible cellulose.

Here's a shrunken sample of the documented alien world -- a Saccinobacculus("snake-in-a-bag") with a bacteria-laden butt of Barbulonympha in the background. Click on  either of them for a further journey in the termite (and roach) gut!

About Psi Wavefunction

I first encountered the wonders of the protist realm back in childhood, when a murky droplet of pond scum was revealed by the microscope to entail an alien world in its own right. It took another decade to discover there was a field and a community dedicated to these organisms, and I bade farewell to the study of more familiar big things. As a kid I was also fascinated by tales of exploration of the New World, as well as those of fantasy worlds. I was then sad that the age of surveying new landmasses on earth was over, and that human extraterrestrial adventures are unlikely to happen within our lifetimes. It seemed everything was discovered already. But that could hardly be further from the truth -- all that is necessary to begin one's own Age of Exploration is a new approach or perspective, and a healthy does of imagination. Since reality has conjured far more than the human mind alone ever could, science yields a way to write stories much wilder than fiction. All one needs to access the alien world of microbes around (and inside) them is a shift of scale by simple glass sphere.
I'm currently finishing up my undergraduate degree in Vancouver and in transition career-wise, hopefully to end up in graduate school soon. I was born in Russia (and speak the language) and spent most of my life in US and Canada. In addition to protists, I'm fascinated by evolution, including that of culture and languages, diversity and biology of cells and how they self-organise, linguistics and anthropology, particularly of the less talked-about cultures, sociology of science and plenty of totally random things that snag my attention.
Banner image was kindly post-processed and enhanced by my friend: an accomplished comic artist who goes by Achiru.

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