Scientists documented the creation of a new organism–one that creates stable nitrogen the way plants extract, or “fix,” carbon–as a marine algal organism incorporated a marine bacterium into it and the two operated as a single organism on a cellular level, IFL Science reports. The new organism became the first eukaryote–an organism with distinct DNA in a nucleus–that could “fix” nitrogen.
The process is more than symbiosis or some Star Trek plot about a formless sentient being using another body as a host. This process is only known to have happened three times before in history: when one of the building blocks of life, mitochondria, was first formed, then about a billion years ago, when a similar process created chloroplast which, in turn, created plant life. A third occurrence created chloroplast again.
Two new research papers show that the bacterium UCYN-A combined with the haptophyte algae Braarudosphaera bigelowii to become a new type of organelle. It’s unclear how the process of fixing nitrogen, which produces stable nitrogen compounds from loose molecules in the environment, assists the new creature.