Tuesday, January 16, 2007

International group of scientists from France, Germany and Canada with the help of a microscope discovered a new type of living creatures in the northern latitudes of Alaska. They were called picobiliphytes. It turned out, that these unusual creatures also represent a new group, called Picobiliphyta. Picobiliphytes are extremely small unicellular seaweed, which diameter is only a few microns. So, the word "pico" in their name means their small size, word "bili" they got from biliproteins, which they contain, and "phytes" because they are plants. The discovery took place due to the laborious analysis of the huge number of DNA consecutions, which belong to the extensive microorganism community, which live in the ocean. One of the consecutions groups appeared to be totally different from all of the rest. Scientists say that these groups are as different as genomes of plants and animals. It shows that some of the gene consecutions found in the seaweed can not be associated with any of the known organism groups. Picobiliphytes discovery is very important for the indepth understanding of the aquatic plants in the Earth ecosystem. Approximately 50% of the all global photosynthesis takes place in the world ocean. It's provided by the seaweed - phytoplankton. Scientists assume that 90% varieties of this plankton are still unknown.