Membrane-coat proteins: Bacteria have them too
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 18:42
in Biology & Nature
Although they are present almost everywhere, on land and sea, a group of related bacteria in the superphylum Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae, or PVC, have remained in relative obscurity ever since they were first described about a decade ago. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered that these poorly-studied bacteria possess proteins thought to exist only in eukaryotes – organisms whose cells have a nucleus. Their findings, featured on the cover of today's edition of PLoS Biology, could help to unravel part of the evolutionary history of eukaryotic cells such as our own.