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Biologists sometimes use the phrase "arms race" to describe an evolutionary tug-of-war, but it's rarely this literal. Microbes called dinoflagellates [...] have developed intricate weapons—including a microscopic version of a Gatling gun—to harpoon their dinners, a new study shows. Scientists have known about these harpoons for decades, and some have guessed that the weapons stem from the same source as the ones wielded by jellyfish and other cnidarians. An analysis of the genes and proteins involved with weapon construction, however, shows that dinoflagellates and cnidarians use different proteins to manufacture their weapons—meaning they arrived at similar solutions through separate evolutionary paths, researchers report today in Science Advances.
Microbial arms race: Ballistic "nematocysts" in dinoflagellates represent a new extreme in organelle complexity (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602552) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:36PM (1 child)
Please someone explain to me how this is ANY kind of a "Gatling gun"!
(Score: 4, Informative) by patrick on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:38PM
From the paper:
Nematodinium lacks taeniocysts and coiled ballistic tubules—instead, each nematocyst consists of a ring of parallel subcapsules reminiscent of a Gatling gun.
It's confusing because that video is so watered down.
The real accomplishment is in the first filming, the finding of the new mechanism, and the finding "that nematocysts evolved independently in both lineages".
Abstract:
We examine the origin of harpoon-like secretory organelles (nematocysts) in dinoflagellate protists. These ballistic organelles have been hypothesized to be homologous to similarly complex structures in animals (cnidarians); but we show, using structural, functional, and phylogenomic data, that nematocysts evolved independently in both lineages. We also recorded the first high-resolution videos of nematocyst discharge in dinoflagellates. Unexpectedly, our data suggest that different types of dinoflagellate nematocysts use two fundamentally different types of ballistic mechanisms: one type relies on a single pressurized capsule for propulsion, whereas the other type launches 11 to 15 projectiles from an arrangement similar to a Gatling gun. Despite their radical structural differences, these nematocysts share a single origin within dinoflagellates and both potentially use a contraction-based mechanism to generate ballistic force. The diversity of traits in dinoflagellate nematocysts demonstrates a stepwise route by which simple secretory structures diversified to yield elaborate subcellular weaponry.