Researchers believe that the microbe, which was absorbed by an algal cell 100 million years ago, has since become an integral part of the cell’s machinery. In a revolutionary discovery, scientists have discovered the first known structure in complex cells that can extract nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a form the cell can use.

They named the newly discovered part of the cell “nitroplast”. Researchers believe it likely originated 100 million years ago, according to two recent studies.

Nitroplast probably formed from a bacterium in the ocean after the microbe was engulfed by an algal cell. It was thought that bacteria and algae lived in symbiosis, that microbes provided nitrogen in a form that the algae could use, and that the algae provided a home for the microbe.

But it turned out that the microbe long ago acquired a new form, becoming a full-fledged cellular structure or organelle, whose metabolism is directly related to the metabolism of algae.

“It’s very rare for organelles to emerge from these things.” aforementioned Tyler Cole is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and lead author of one of two new studies identifying the nitroplast.

This discovery is the fourth known example in the history of Earth’s “primary endosymbiosis”; The process by which a eukaryotic cell (a cell in which DNA is contained within a nucleus, as in all animals, plants, and fungi) engulfs a prokaryotic cell. something without a core. In this case, a eukaryotic algal cell engulfed a prokaryotic bacterial cell.