Discover new forms of life in the Southern Ocean

An international team of scientists includes the Lovejoy Université Laval biologist Connie, who has discovered a new form of life in the Southern Ocean. The team's findings are published in the January 12 issue of Science.

Scientists have discovered a new group of microscopic organisms they named " picobiliphytes ": set to 'pico' because they are super-small, about a millionth of a meter, set to ' bili ' by Because they contain bili protein, fluorescence has a high level of light that can transform light into biomass (biomass), and phyte means they are plants.

This discovery is achieved by a thorough analysis of DNA sequences of large populations of microorganisms living in the ocean. 'There is a group of DNA sequences that are not aligned with any known group,' explains Dr Lovejoy. 'In fact, the difference of this group compared to known organisms is very large, like the difference between plants in soil and animals,' he added.

Southern Ocean (Photo: reliefshading)

Since last year, the team has ' scoured ' databases to verify their results and apply new techniques to their models. Now, they can confirm that these new forms of life are very much distributed in the northern seas. They have been transplanted, but they can be seen using advanced microscopy techniques.

'This is a very interesting discovery,' said Dr. Lovejoy. 'The ocean covers 70% of the earth and we now only come to assess its rich and complex biodiversity.'

Thanh Van