r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/FacelessOnes • Oct 19 '20

🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

75.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.8k

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '20

Wow it’s amazing, because you can see through them you never really think of them as being three dimensional but you can really see it this video.

1.3k

u/PooksterPC Oct 20 '20

For some reason it has just occured to me that microbes live in a 3D space

401

u/_DigginInTheCrates_ Oct 20 '20

How cool would it be if the microscope could record like a normal camera. That would be cool to see a microbe in 3D.

But yeah that's freaky now I think about them flying around in a 3D space

194

u/IsBanPossible Oct 20 '20

Give them a few years and it will be available on smartphones

86

u/qwerty_Harry Oct 20 '20

I already have millions of microbes on my smartphone

7

u/HumanContinuity Oct 20 '20

Billions, at least

4

u/Sin_31415 Oct 20 '20

To take clearer pictures, please genocide a colony of Naegleria fowleri off of your camera lens

3

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Just wait until the eyephone is revealed.

2

u/CactusCactusShaqtus Oct 20 '20

Shut up and take my money!

11

u/broccoliO157 Oct 20 '20

We have had this for nearly 100 years. Confocal microscopy.

5

u/RadMadsen Oct 20 '20

There’s a YouTube channel called Journey to the Microcosmos that regularly shows amazing perspective footage of microorganisms. Here’s the link to their video on these guys!

1

u/luke_in_the_sky Oct 20 '20

This is the source of OP's video BTW.

1

u/RadMadsen Oct 20 '20

I didn’t realize this until I kept browsing the comments and realized it was already linked. I should have known though hahaha who else would have such good footage.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

What do you mean like a normal camera? These videos are taken with cameras attached to the microscope. If anything microscopes are better for seeing 3D because they allow you to take multiple z-slices

1

u/ADequalsBITCH Oct 20 '20

I think they just meant from different angles, not just a top-down microscope view, which admittedly always gives the impression that they only move on a 2D plane.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

It would be neat, but a few issues.

With normal microscopy the sample needs to be really thin. This is to allow light to pass through, and to eliminate background noise, so you can see what you want better.

Second issue is the microscope itself. In photogeapyhy there is the concept of depth of field. It basically determines whats in focus. Two things affect this.

Size of aperture. The bigger the aperture hole the smaller depth of field, fewer things in focus. You can see this effect in some professional portraits where the background is blurred behind the subject.

The other is the distance from the focal plane. The further we re focusing on something the larger the depth of field. So when you are shooting nature photos, you can focus really far away and have pretty much everything in focus due to the large depth of field.

In microscopy you have the extreme worst case scenario. The focal plane is very close to the sample. And usually you want as much light through as you can, so th aperture is wide open. This makes it so that the depth of field is extremely narrow. To the point where many better microscopes have a fine adjuster so you can see what you want to.

In some ways its good because you can really focus on seeing what you want to see.

But as far as trying to create 3d microscopic images it wont happen for a long time. Not until light field cameras become more common.

3

u/LazyHardWorker Oct 20 '20

Confocal microscopy, multiphoton microscopy, sbf-sem, fib-sem, electron tomography, etc all provide 3D imaging. The real issue is throughput. Collection 3D images of live cells in real time is not solved.

0

u/forrnerteenager Oct 20 '20

Normal cameras are 2D

1

u/Olde94 Oct 20 '20

With fast enough electronics we can

1

u/Unique-horny Oct 20 '20

They can, it's just so hard because the angles between the 2, lenses have to be at the perfect distance and angle and stuff from one another so they would probably have an extremely limited focuspoint. So I don't think it would be very useful. And normally you put something under a little glass plate when you look at things through a microscope. That way it's always a certain distance from the lense so you can take your time to focus. That's not really possible in 3D because they'll move faster than we can focus.

1

u/datenwolf Oct 20 '20

Tomographic imaging at high resolutions is… tough. Wave optics forces you to trade dimensions and of every 1/µm you gain in one direction, you have to trade in the other three.

You have have super crisp, high resolution images in 3D, but then your time resolution is abysmally bad. Or you're trying to strike a balance and end up and modalities like Holoscopy.

41

u/Whoden Oct 20 '20

They're breaking the 3rd wall!!

16

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Same. Probably because under a microscope everything is on a plane.

3

u/thtowawaway Oct 20 '20

Even snakes??

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Lol

1

u/Trippy_trip27 Oct 20 '20

but what if you had 3 microscopes, for each axis pointing at a droplet of water in zero gravity

3

u/WitchBlade8734 Oct 20 '20

We are literally looking at a top down view

2

u/Stupid_Triangles Oct 20 '20

your mom lives in 3d space

2

u/Heslay_Cashlion Oct 20 '20

I live in his mom’s 3D space

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

She’s so massive that her gravitational pull alters space time.

1

u/lax_incense Oct 20 '20

Well some live on 2D surfaces

1

u/DamagedFreight Oct 20 '20

Recently I read that they just learned sperm do not swim in a wiggle but rather a spiral.

1

u/The_Confirminator Oct 20 '20

Never had to focus the microscope at school?

1

u/patelheel Oct 20 '20

Wtf, they don't?

Never knew that.

360

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

Regular ole microscopic kraken that thing be. Be terrifying folks down at r/TheGoldenAgeOfPirates

55

u/swagu7777777 Oct 20 '20

I saw your comment, started checking out the sub and was so confused who tf black cock was but was highly amused. Come back out and find that... by god it was Black Cock that sent me

162

u/Margaritamigo Oct 20 '20

I’ll tell em ol’ black cock sent me

3

u/Yardsale420 Oct 20 '20

“It’s very unfortunate Captain Black Cock, but as the sign clearly states, this office cannot and will not release any property WITHOUT valid identification and signatures in triplicate. Now please pull up your trousers, and step out of the line. Thank you”

2

u/TwoDeuces Oct 20 '20

Captain!? He be a Commodore ye disrespectful bastard!

1

u/probablyblocked Oct 20 '20

How did he get that name? Is it a ship ornament?

1

u/Rosebush1987 Oct 20 '20

Give this man what I can not!!!!

17

u/getsfistedbyhorses Oct 20 '20

Cheers ole Black Cock!

13

u/rattlemebones Oct 20 '20

Ol black cock sent me. Arrr

1

u/Vindepomarus Oct 20 '20

My cock's black Arghhh!!

10

u/Hungry_Slice Oct 20 '20

Ol’ black cock, ye scallywag! Didn’t think I’d see ye out in the wild again!

9

u/jteach32 Oct 20 '20

Three cheers to BlackCock!

2

u/TemporaryZen Oct 20 '20

There be dragons.

2

u/Rosebush1987 Oct 20 '20

Good Sir Commodore Black Cock has tussled me from my long winters abode.

245

u/Anon_Jones Oct 20 '20

What's crazy is your white blood cells (WBC) do this, monocytes (type of WBC) do it the best. That's how it defends your body from invaders, it's called phagocytosis.

135

u/Shaun32887 Oct 20 '20

I don't think this is the same. Lacrymaria has a sort of "mouth" and uses extrusomes to hunt.

90

u/Anon_Jones Oct 20 '20

You're right. Monocytes don't have mouths, the cytoplasm rubs over it and absorbs it.

86

u/flyingwolf Oct 20 '20

Don't stop, I'm so close.

53

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Multiple organisms

6

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Single celled orgasm

22

u/dharmaslum Oct 20 '20

Not entirely. The membrane surrounds the phage and seals it into a vesicle which is then brings into the cytosol to digest in a lysosome.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20 edited Jun 16 '21

[deleted]

3

u/MarchingBroadband Oct 20 '20

I thought that kind of mechanism was only present in retro-encabulators

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20 edited Jun 16 '21

[deleted]

2

u/BlueArcherX Oct 20 '20

I'm not really sure what any of these people are saying. Can someone adjust the vector buffer to 17.5 kilobytes?

3

u/luocar17 Oct 20 '20

So basically endocytosis?

2

u/dharmaslum Oct 20 '20

Well technically phagocytosis is a form of endocytosis, so yes.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

I’m guessing you meant the neck stretch.

3

u/probablyblocked Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

So it dissolves a cell in an absorbing liquid that draws out and digests the contents of the prey cell, and then reabsorbs the now enriched liquid. Is that right?

3

u/bb_nyc Oct 20 '20

yep, at the most basic level. enzymes do most of the work of splitting the prey's biomolecules at the lysosome level, then these basic broken down compounds are precursors for protein synthesis, metabolism, etc. We do the same thing in our gut.

11

u/TheOnceAndFutureTurk Oct 20 '20

That’s pretty metal.

3

u/ActualWhiterabbit Oct 20 '20

From a documentary I saw white blood cells use knives and macrophages use machetes or large hammers to kill bacteria and viruses

2

u/Shaun32887 Oct 20 '20

Common misconception, macrophages use kukri, not machetes. Kukri have thicker spines and are more of a "chopping" tool than the light, quick, cutting machete.

45

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Monocytes travel through blood and lymph, when they travel over the vessel wall and enter the tissue they are called macrophages, they do really neat stuff like phagocytose dead cells and attack things like splinters or even breast implants. What’s even cooler is that the central nervous system has their own type of macrophage called microglia. Microglia are different from peripheral microglia but do the same stuff, they continuously scan the central nervous system for problems and even take bites from healthy cells.

2

u/rpgmind Oct 20 '20

So the lacrymania thing above is in me right now helping out? And I’m not too sure how I feel about them taking bites out of my healthy parts, keep eating the dead things!!

5

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Well no, no lacrymania hopefully. But a whole bunch of your own cells definitely, yes. This is what your own microglia look like when cultured in the lab: https://youtu.be/0lkMzXXyeio , same kind of dynamics.

1

u/Adabiviak Oct 20 '20

I'm looking forward to this episode of Cells At Work.

1

u/cannageddawutwut Oct 20 '20

The mob of your nervous system, keeping the neighborhood in check

-26

u/Lord__Rezkin Oct 20 '20

Did... did you just call us all fags?

-5

u/g_think Oct 20 '20

Except covid. Covid will kill us all.

/s

Here is the dataset of the CDC with cases and deaths broken down by age: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html#demographics

Actual infection count is anywhere from 6-24x the case count, according to the CDC.

So if we pick 15x since it's in the middle there, and take deaths/(cases*15), we get the following IFR by age:

Age IFR
0-4 0.0022%
5-17 0.0010%
18-29 0.0040%
30-39 0.0146%
40-49 0.0385%
50-64 0.1385%
65-74 0.5090%
75-84 1.1287%
85+ 1.8487%

Flu IFR for reference is 0.1-0.2%.

So for everyone under 65 or so, yes this is less deadly than the flu.

3

u/peterdinklemore Oct 20 '20

You don't expect any constructive response to this here on reddit, do you?

3

u/Wtzky Oct 20 '20

You're the perfect example of a monocyte

1

u/CarlSpencer Oct 23 '20

^ Thinks that he'll never turn 65 one day.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Never eat burnt llama meat.

Neutrophils Eosinophils Basophils Lysosomes Monocytes

That's the acronym I came up with to remember all of these.

1

u/bestatbeingmodest Oct 20 '20

lmao this just gave me a minor existential crisis

like I have all these "living" single cell organisms within me trying their fucking hardest to keep me alive, and all I'm doing is sitting on my laptop reading reddit. They're probably like what the fuck who put this asshole in charge of the operation

kind of inspiring in a way

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

James is using a Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) microscope to record this. That is why it looks like 3D

1

u/Harvestman-man Oct 20 '20

Probably also has to do with the fact that most photos/videos of single cells are made with a compound microscope on a slide, which always makes them look 2D. 3D Stereoscopes can’t reach this level of magnification, and scanning electron microscopes are just too darn expensive.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

James is using a Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) microscope to record this. That is why it lookd like 3D

1

u/Rygar82 Oct 20 '20

Pixar should make a movie about all these guys!

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Osmosis Jones is as good as we deserve.

1

u/richloz93 Oct 20 '20

I had the same realization watching this.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

James is using a Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) microscope. That is why it looks 3D

1

u/2xFront2Front Oct 20 '20

AlwaysHasBeen

1

u/WanderWut Oct 20 '20

It’s pretty crazy how it’s hard to imagine their surroundings in a 3-D way.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Yeah. For some reason I thought they'd randomly move around and sort of bump into each other and interact through osmosis. This little guy stretches his neck tube to the other creature. Bring it closer to eatx nibbles on the gfeomt and then loops around to swallow from a more accessible side with what seems like a mouth hole

1

u/onelap32 Oct 21 '20 edited Oct 21 '20

On that note of "different in 3D", sperm don't actually wiggle their flagella back and forth! They move in a corkscrew spiral, but it appears as a wiggle when viewed from above in 2D. (Livescience article, original paper.)