Since their discovery, members of the phylum Planctomycetota have surprised scientists with their unique features. Although the molecular mechanism is yet to be elucidated, bacteria from the class Planctomycetia are well known for their budding cell division. Recently, several environmental isolates belonging to the phylum Planctomycetota were discovered, which challenge commonly accepted principles of bacterial cell biology yet again. One of these exceptional strains was reported by Shiratori et al. (2019): In addition to its eukaryotic-like locomotion and division, it is capable of engulfing prey bacteria in an endocytosis-like mechanism. As many scientists were rather sceptical about the bacterial identity of this organism, we investigated its characteristics in more detail and confirmed the findings of Shiratori et al. (2019). Furthermore, we isolated several similarly behaving bacteria from environmental samples.

References:

Shiratori, T., Suzuki, S., Kakizawa, Y., and Ishida, K. I. 2019. 'Phagocytosis-like cell engulfment by a planctomycete bacterium', Nature Communications, 10: 5529.