The answer seems to be that the true essence of life is not some handful of genes, but coexistence. Tremblaya lives in one particular place: the body of a mealybug. And the mealybug, in turn, depends on Tremblaya for its survival. The insect’s only source of food is the sap that it drinks from trees. On its own, the mealybug couldn’t survive on this meager diet. Tremblaya transforms the sap into vitamins and amino acids, which the mealybug can then use to build proteins. In exchange for this biological alchemy, mealybugs provide Tremblaya with a steady source of food and shelter. It’s not precisely accurate to say that Tremblaya provides this service. It needs help. Scientists have long known that Tremblaya contains mysterious blobs, but it wasn’t until 2001 that Carol D. von Dohlen of Utah State University and her colleagues discovered that those blobs were a second species of bacteria, living within Tremblaya.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 04:52:37 +0000
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