Science Fast Technology: New discovery – Bacteria can see

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

New discovery – Bacteria can see – Norrtelje Newspaper

A lone sailboat bows through a heavy accumulation of cyanobacteria off the Rural Area in the Stockholm archipelago in July 2005. Now, researchers have discovered that mucus can see. Stock Photography.

: COAST GUARD / TT

Science / TT

All bacteria are not blind as many believed. On the contrary, some of them see their environment in much the same way as we do, according to a study.

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Facts

Facts: cyanobacteria

cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae they are called colloquially, has already occurred 2.7 billion years ago and were the first photosynthetic organisms on earth. Long before the plants developed the ability to convert solar energy into chemical energy.

In the process, oxygen is produced. The cyanobacteria were the first organisms to oxygen put the earth’s atmosphere and still they produce about half of all the oxygen on Earth.

Source: Elife.

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in the study, published in the scientific journal Elife, the researchers examined how the cyanobacteria acted in order to detect light.

cyanobacteria found in oceans and lakes. They are photosynthetic and therefore need light to survive. In everyday speech, usually called blue-green algae, because they produce a blue-green slime when they multiply on a large scale – so-called algae bloom.

The researchers discovered that the bacteria can detect both light and colors. The unicellular organisms also know which direction the light is coming from. The whole bacterial cell has a spherical shape and function as an optical lens at a micro – cell is half a billion times smaller than a human eye – which means that a high resolution image of the light source is focused on the cell’s opposite side.

In the laboratory could scientists see the tiny tentacle-like structures growing out of the bacteria as soon as they hit the light. With the help of the tentacles sought out since the bacteria to the light source.

According to scientists, the bacterial cell is probably the smallest and oldest eye on earth.