World’s Largest Bacteria Found, 5,000 Times Bigger Than Usual Size

POINTE-A-PITRE, KOMPAS.com – The biggest bacteria in the world found in the mangroves of Guadeloupe, France. This variety can be seen with the naked eye and taken using tweezers.

The size of the largest bacteria reaches 2 cm, about 5,000 times larger than most bacteria.

Named Thiomargarita magnifica, the biggest bacteria in the world it has a more complex structure, according to research published in the journal Science on Thursday (23/6/2022).

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The discovery shakes up much of the knowledge in microbiology, Olivier Gros professor of biology at the University of the Antilles and one of the study’s authors, told AFP.

In his laboratory in the Caribbean city of Pointe-a-Pitre, he marvels at the sight of a test tube filled with strands like white eyelashes.

“At first I thought it wasn’t bacteria because something two centimeters in size couldn’t possibly be one,” he said.

The researchers first saw the strange filaments in a patch of sulfur-rich mangrove sediment in 2009.

Various techniques including electronic microscopy revealed it was a bacterial organism, but there was no guarantee it was a single cell.

Attempts to prove the largest bacteria in the world