Non-Potluck: With a pinch of extra salt—Did predatory protists steal genes from their food?

This article published in PLOS biology, attempts to analyze bacteria and single celled protists in a salt saturated ecosystem. The Halohilic protists are deemed to be ecophysiologically important inhabitants of salt-stressed ecosystems due to their abundance and the fact that they represent the majority of eukaryotic lineages. The study focuses on the the Eukarya that use the so called "salt-out" strategy to cope with high saline content in their habitat. The paper found that intro-containing biosynthetic genes for ectoine and hydroxyectoine along with the salt stress response of the protist Halocafeteria seosinensis and subsequent production of ectoine were imported by the protist Schmidingerothrix salinarum. This came as a surprise to the researchers because previously the ectoines have been considered exlusively prokaryotic compatible solutes i.e. they were incompatible with the eukaryotes being studied. Finally the paper suggests that the genes of H. seosinensis exhibit evidence of lateral gene transfer by the bacterivorous Eukarya from the ectoine/hydroxyectoine-producing food bacteria from the same area.

Thats a bit of a tough one to understand, so for a TL;DR The scientists discovered that a species of Eukaryote was aquiring genes in a salt saturated ecosystem through lateral gene transfer from bacteria eating Eukaryotes.

link to the article

- Louis

(PLOS biology Monitor Article 1/3)