Bacteria organelle update attracts attention

Description

A review paper casting light on fascinating internal compartments in bacterial cells called organelles proved irresistible to a variety of media outlets. The review, published in the high-impact Nature Reviews Microbiology, was written by Monash BDI’s Professor Trevor Lithgow and Associate Professor Chris Greening, experts in bacterial cell biology and physiology. “There was an age-old truism until recently that bacteria were simply a bag of enzymes, the simplest type of cells,” Professor Lithgow said. “New developments in nanoscale imaging have shown that internal compartments – organelles – make them very complex,” he said. Among the extraordinary functions performed by organelles are that some can orientate themselves relative to the Earth’s magnetic field by lining up magnetic iron particles. ScienceDaily, yahoo news!, labroots, SCIENCE Codex, vaaju, Australian Online News, ENGGtalks, and PHYS ORG all ran the story.