Scientists Discover a Whole New Kingdom of Life
Researchers in Nova Scotia have found a unique species that appears to be from a completely new kingdom of life, separate from plants, animals, or pretty much everything else. The new discovery helps us learn more about life on Earth and how it evolved.
In the wilderness of Nova Scotia, biology grad student Yana Eglit from Dalhousie University was hiking and decided to collect some dirt samples. When she got back to the lab to analyze them, she discovered a strange microscopic creature she had only ever seen once before: a hemimastigote.
Hemimastigotes have been studied since the 1800s, so it’s not like Eglit just discovered a brand new species. However, 19th century biologists didn’t have access to modern DNA sequencing technology, so they were really flummoxed by the creatures. Until now, hemimastigotes have never had their DNA sequenced.
That new DNA sequence revealed a surprise: Hemimastigotes are so distant from all other forms of life that they likely deserve their own kingdom designation. The researchers found that these new creatures deviated from other life about a billion years ago, back when there were only a few multicellular life forms.
So what does it mean that hemimastigotes are their own kingdom? At the highest level, all of life is sorted into one of three ‘domains,’ which are the category above kingdom. Bacteria form one domain; their close relatives, archaea, form another. The last domain encompasses everything else, commonly referred to as ‘eukaryotes.’ Hemimastigotes are at least similar enough to animals and other life that they can fit into the eukaryote domain.
But beyond that, there are no other similarities between hemimastigotes and other life. All members of the eukaryote domain are organized into a handful of ‘kingdoms,’ although there’s still some debate about just how many there are. The most commonly-recognized ones are: animals, plants, fungi, algae, and ‘protists,’ which is mostly just a catch-all category for things that don’t fit into one of the other four groups.
But hemimastigotes are so strange and different that they can’t fit into any of these categories-even the catch-all one-leading the researchers at Dalhousie to propose a new kingdom just for them. This decision can’t be made lightly, of course, and still has to be verified by other scientists. But it does highlight just how incredibly diverse life can be.
Source: CBC
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