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.
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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!
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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.
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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!
