This discovery may provide insights into the evolution of complex life forms. A team of researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain has identified a new species named Barroeca monosierra in an environment with extreme salinity. The microbe belongs to the group known as choanoflagellates, single-celled organisms that can cluster together to form colonies resembling multicellular life.
B. monosierra was discovered thriving in Mono Lake, a highly salty environment almost three times saltier than the Pacific Ocean. The species forms colonies of up to 100 cells, significantly larger than those of related species.
What makes this discovery even more intriguing is that the centers of these colonies house smaller communities of live bacteria, making B. monosierra one of the simplest organisms known to have its own microbiome. Researchers speculate that the microbes might be using these bacteria for protection from the toxic lake water or possibly farming them for future consumption.
Choanoflagellates are considered the closest living relatives of animals, making them of particular interest to biologists studying the evolution of multicellular organisms. Nicole King, a cell biologist from the University of California, Berkeley, noted that the colonies formed by B. monosierra resemble the blastula, a hollow ball of cells that appears early in animal development.
"We wanted to learn more about it," King said. Mono Lake is known for its extreme conditions, with high con.