Microbe Sex !

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2014/01/140103204500-large.jpg

Microbes have sex! Sounds pretty crazy right? Not according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Bristol have for the first time observed microbes mating. The microbes that were caught in the act belong to a strange group of protozoa. Trypanosomes are the cause of the tropical disease African sleeping sickness. African sleeping sickness causes fever, headaches, itches, and joint pains in the first stage of the sickness, and then in the second stage the parasites invade the central nervous system and disrupt the sleeping cycle which leads to trouble sleeping and that’s were the name comes from. The research teams were able to observe the microbes twirling together before they formed into one hybrid cell. And according to the scientists sex matters for the microbes because it enables them to swap genes between the different strains. Although it is really important for the microbes it can also be potentially be dangerous. This is due to a lot of harmful genes can be combined into one strain, which leads to drug resistant strains to develop. Before this discovery scientist believed that these microbes reproduced by splitting in half by binary fission.

This article was very interesting but was very brief and did not contain much scientific facts, it was like the icing on the cake. It could have gone more into depth and provide more background information about the parasite. This new information opened my eyes about protozoa and microbes; I had no idea that microorganisms had sex.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140103204500.htm