Deep-sea microorganisms and the origin of the eukaryotic cell

Abstract

Living cells are deeply divided into two enormously divergent levels of complexity: prokaryotic and eukaryotic. Eukaryotes are thought to have developed from prokaryotic predecessors; however the large differences in their cellular structures results in equally large questions of how the process might have occurred. In 2012, in the deep-sea off the coast of Japan, we discovered a unique microorganism appearing to have cellular features intermediate between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The organism, the Myojin parakaryote (tentatively named by Yamaguchi et al., 2012), was two orders of magnitude larger than a typical bacterium and had a large “nucleoid”, consisting of naked DNA fibers, surrounded by a single layered “nucleoid membrane”, and bacteria-like “endosymbionts”, but it lacked mitochondria. This organism exemplifies a potential evolutionary path between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and strongly supports the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria and the karyogenetic hypothesis for the origin of the nucleus. In this review, we describe how the Myojin parakaryote was discovered, the features of this organism, the significance of the discovery, and perspectives on future research.