This little guy was playing a game of hide-and-seek with scientists. It was originally discovered in the 1920s, but since then, it's only been spotted one more time before it seemed to just... Vanish. But researchers at the University of Tsukuba decided it was time to bring Rhabdamoeba back into the light. And this time, they didn't just spot 'Rhabdamoeba marina'; they managed to cultivate it. They are now growing these rare and elusive amoebas in their lab from seawater sourced from the coast of Tottori Prefecture, Japan. Their genome has been sequenced and its phylogenetic position has been clarified for the first time
Chelsea Hanawalt
@allowthesun · 0:28
Hi. This is so cool. I love their channel and this rare amoeba. I'm so curious. Do you know what are they going to do now that they have been able to duplicate this rare amoeba? That's really cool that they found. And I had no idea that you could do that with amoebas. So thanks again for sharing this. Bye
Freya Hammar
@freylaverse · 0:28
Hey, thanks so much for replying! Honestly they could be doing anything with it now. Microbiology has so many different avenues, and I'm not a part of their lab. If I were, I would be tempted to set up water samples with Rhabdamoeba marina and various other, similar types of amoebae and see how they compete with each other. If Rhabdamoeba seems to show any particular advantage in certain conditions, then I would do a comparative analysis to see if it's perhaps producing a certain protein that's giving it that advantage