Scientists have found the world's largest bacterium in a swamp in Guadeloupe - it is in the form of white hair and the size of a human blink, writes The Guardian.

The foreign organism called "Magnificent ThiomargariteIs one centimeter long and 50 times larger than other large bacteria. This is the first bacterium visible to the naked eye. Thin white hairs were found on the surface of decaying mangrove leaves in the shallow tropical swamp area.

The finding is surprising, because according to cellular metabolism patterns, the bacteria should not be so large. He discovered the bacterium Olivier Gross, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Antilles in Guadeloupe. This happened while symbiotic bacteria were being sought in the mangrove ecosystem.

"When I saw them, I thought: weird," Gross said.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered to have a strange internal structure. While in most bacteria DNA floats freely in the cell, in this bacterium the DNA is bound to the cell membrane. It has also been found to contain three times as many genes as most bacteria, as well as hundreds of thousands of copies of the genome distributed throughout each cell, making it unusually complex.

It is not clear to scientists how this bacterium became so large. One possible reason for this is that it has adapted in this way to avoid predators.

Researchers have discovered a bacterium — named Thiomargarita magnifica — that challenges the prevailing view of bacterial cell size. It is larger than all other known giant bacteria by ~ 50-fold. Learn more: https://t.co/bvUSuR2ebK #ScienceResearch pic.twitter.com/RC8YWm4sVA

- Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) June 23, 2022

No such bacteria were found in other locations. After the researchers returned to the location where they found the bacterium, it was no longer there. It is assumed that the reason for its disappearance is that it is a seasonal organism.