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Femtoplankton: What's New?
Jonathan Colombet1, Maxime Fuster1, Hermine Billard1
1Laboratoire Microorganismes: Génome et Environnement (LMGE), UMR CNRS 6023, Université Clermont Auvergne, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Viruses
|August 19, 2020
Summary
Aquatic ecosystems harbor diverse, overlooked femtoplankton, including mineral-organic particles, extracellular vesicles, and novel aster-like nanoparticles (ALNs). This review highlights their origins, composition, and ecological roles.
Area of Science:
- Environmental microbiology
- Aquatic ecology
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Recent advances in microscopy and molecular biology enable femtoplankton characterization.
- Femtoplankton, entities filterable on 0.2 µm pore size filters, are abundant in aquatic environments.
- Overlooked femtoplankton include virus-like particles, biomimetic mineral-organic particles, extracellular vesicles, CPR/DPANN, and aster-like nanoparticles (ALNs).
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the unsuspected diversity of femtoplankton in aquatic ecosystems.
- To review the origin, composition, and ecological potentials of organic femtoplankton.
- To emphasize the significance of newly discovered entities like ALNs.
Main Methods:
- Review of recent scientific literature (2010-2020) on femtoplankton.
- Analysis of data from microscopy and molecular biology techniques.
- Evolutionary contextualization of identified femtoplankton entities.
Main Results:
- Aquatic ecosystems are vast reservoirs of diverse and previously unidentified femtoplankton.
- Evidence shows high abundances of mineral-organic particles, extracellular vesicles, CPR/DPANN, and ALNs.
- Aster-like nanoparticles (ALNs) represent a very recent discovery in femtoplankton research.
Conclusions:
- Femtoplankton diversity is far greater than previously recognized.
- Organic femtoplankton entities possess significant ecological potentials.
- Understanding femtoplankton, from minerals to cell-like entities, provides evolutionary insights.
Keywords:
aster-like nanoparticlesbiomimetic mineral–organic particlesextracellular vesiclesfemtoplanktongene transfer agentsultra-small prokaryotesvirusesMore Related Videos
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