An endosymbiont is an organism incorporated into the cell of another organism in a mutually beneficial relationship—though it’s hard to draw the line from what we would consider weeds, hitchhiking genes or parasitism—and this rare and seminal phenomenon evolutionarily energised complex life roughly two 
billion years ago when a cell-attacking virus absorbed a bacterium that eventually became the organelle of all advanced cell structures known as the mitochondria, the cellular power-house. Going forward another billion years, a similar auspicious capture of a cyanobacteria led to the development of chloroplasts that are common to the plant kingdom. Not on the same level as the above symbiogenesis but not insignificant are the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that cohabitate in the root nodules of legumes, the chimeric lichens and the algae that live in coral reefs. Now—via the New Shelton Wet/Dry—we learn that researchers are uncovering evidence of another possible biological sea-change—possibly comparable to the way animals and plants have terraformed the Earth but we shouldn’t count on this as our saving grace for what we’ve done to the environment—with signs that common marine algae is engulfing bacteria—like pulses, peas and beans above—that enables seaweeds to fix nitrogen. Aside from possible insights into the once-in-a-billion-years enhancement, it could present a fundamental change in agricultural practises and mitigate some factors in climate modelling.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Wes Anderson’s Star Wars, the 1939 World’s Fair, hypertext markup language is released into the public domain (1993) plus more gashapon mania
two years ago: text-to-images plus modern medievalism
three years ago: your daily demon: Paimon plus a tiny Japanese fire truck on the streets of San Francisco
four years ago: the Church of Satan (1966), social-distancing headgear plus municipal flags of Russia
five years ago: more mass-transit upholstery, windowless houses, assorted links to revisit plus Walpurgis Night
