Researchers from Bremen, together with their colleagues from the Max Planck Genome Center in Cologne and the aquatic research institute Eawag from Switzerland, have discovered a unique bacterium that lives inside a unicellular eukaryote and provides it with energy. Unlike mitochondria, this so-called endosymbiont derives energy from the respiration of nitrate, not oxygen. “Such partnership is completely new,” says Jana Milucka, the senior author on the Nature. “A symbiosis that is based on respiration and transfer of energy is to this date unprecedented.”
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Source: Phys.org