MIC.RO
Laboratory of Marine Multi-partner Symbioses
New paper published in Protist
A beautiful ciliate with very intriguing ectosymbionts – Spirorhynchus verrucosus – has been long forgotten by science. Now we know it is yet another genus of the obligately anaerobic Muranotrichea, isolated so far only in marine and brackish coastal hypoxic environments.
Well, the sister of Spirorhynchus verrucosus has been livin' in the deep sea of Santa Barbara Basin since the 90's!
Read more about this wonderful collaboratove work of Bill Bourland & Cepicka Lab, Roxanne Beinart, and Joan Bernhard enabling deep sea sampling in the new Protist paper at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2025.126129.
Storytime.
There is so much to say about this journey.
When I first saw the drawing of Spirorhynchus in da Cunha, 1915, isolated from Brazilian Manguinhos, I thought nothing can really look like that - ectosymbionts organized in tuft balls spiralling around the cells? No way!
Well, yes way! It looks just like the drawing, over 110 years old.
When I first saw a live cell of Spirorhynchus in a saltmarsh sample in Cape Cod, during my internship in Ginny Edgcomb's lab over 10 years ago, I couldn't contain my happiness. It exists!
Later, we found it again in several sites in Rhode Island with Roxanne Beinart, whose lab in GSO URI I was doing a postdoc in at that time.
Look at its mesmerizing cilia and the ectosymbionts spiralling around the cell!
The only paper I found showing micrograph of Spirorhynchus was Joan Bernhard's Nature paper 'Santa Barbara Basin is a symbiosis oasis' from 2000. A couple years after seeing it, to my amazement, Joan went to SBB again and brought a sample. It was still there!! www.nature.com/articles/47476
One year later, in Beinart Lab, I got an incredible opportunity to join Joan Bernhard & Ginny Egdcomb on another cruise to SBB and pulled Spirorhynchus out of its cosy stinky home myself (well, watched the A-frame operator do it). Best bday (shared with the captain) EVR!!
Three years later, I have my own lab. In Puerto Rico. And guess who's here!!! During one of our first lab field trips, we sampled a hypersaline shallow lagoon. Yes, Spirorhynchus was in there.
Also by our dock. Trying to get in the lab?! We have welcomed him in and are interviewing his tufty friends!
