A tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

Fantastic - the nitroplast joining a pretty exclusive club there.

Bigelowii itself seems very interesting, even without this nitrogen fixing organelle, having two completely different phases to it's life - one in a weird dodecahedral calcareous shell and one without as a mobile flagellate. Apparently it can exist and reproduce in either form, and occasionally switch forms. It took scientists a long while to realize the two forms are actually the same species.

This is a nicely written article, which feels like a rarity lately.

Kudos to the scientists everywhere that continue to explore the mysteries of nature

I'm skeptical of the "magic noodles" bit as mentioned in the article.

The "tokoroten" noodles are just agar.

Pretty much everyone in biology tries growing cells in agar, right? Surely that can't have been an amazing discovery?

The plastid wiki might be germane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastid

Edit: "It was a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. Hagino fondly just calls it Bigelowii."

Is this pronounced bigggie-lowie?

A 20 year search leads to the discovery of the nitroplast, a nitrogen-fixing organelle hiding inside algae.

Since computational biology is all about simulation, do the chloroplast, the mitochondria, and now the nitro-last, have definitions that could be actively simulated ?

CO2, you say? Human activity produces tens of percent of the bioavailable nitrogen.

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