RenoVous

  Have you ever noticed a green slime blob on your walkway or lawn after it rains? It's called nostoc, or troll's butter, and is a colony of cyanobacteria.  They can live in the water or on land, from the tropics to the poles, and they often form a symbiotic relationship with nearby plants. They can photosynthesize, fix nitrogen, withstand being frozen and thawed multiple times, and absorb UV radiation. They can also survive drying out, known as dessication.  It will turn a dark brown color, blending in with soil, so when it gets rehydrated it seems to appear out of nowhere. If this looks disgusting to you, don't have any fat choy, a delicacy of Chinese cuisine, often enjoyed for the Lunar New Year.  It actually looks worse cooked.

  Scientists have caught an evolutionary event in real time - primary endosymbiosis is thought to have occurred only two other times in the history of life on Earth. That is when two lifeforms merge, one engulfing the other, using it like an internal organ.  In exchange, the host cell provides nutrients, energy, and protection. The first time this happened, an archaea swallowed a bacterium that became the mitochondria, "the powerhouse of the cell." The second time, some of those advanced cells absorbed cyanobacteria that could harvest energy from sunlight, becoming chloroplasts, and giving us plants. And now, a species of algae has engulfed a cyanobacterium that allows them to use nitrogen fixation - combining nitrogen from the air with other elements to create more useful compounds. The scientists will continue studying these nitroplasts. NewsAtlas