In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life (nytimes.com)

What this research is about is the origin of plants, which are indeed one of the most important forms of life, but the origin of plants is distant by billions of years from the origin of life and it is even distant by billions of years from the origin of phototrophy (frequently, but not really correctly, called "photosynthesis", i.e. the extraction of energy from solar light).

The ancestor of red algae and green algae (the terrestrial plants are descended from green algae) has been created by the hybridization through symbiosis between a unicellular eukaryote (i.e. nucleated cell) and a cyanobacterium, a.k.a. blue-green alga.

As explained in TFA, Paulinella is the second case of such a symbiosis between a nucleated cell and a cyanobacterium, which happened relatively recently, unlike the symbiosis from the origin of plants, which happened about a billion and a half years ago.

Because Paulinella and its internal symbionts have not been modified so profoundly by symbiosis like the red algae or green algae, it can provide information about how the early stages of the hybridization happened, eventually allowing a better understanding of how plants function.

I found it reassuring that sketching what you see down the microscope is still part of a scientific practice. Also the 'fresh eyes' could perhaps point the way to a more collegiate organisation of research.

There are stories of companies asking their employees to bring back soil and water samples from wherever the employees go on vacation.

The idea is that this is a somewhat random sampling of locations that the company wouldn't have thought of on their own. Plus, it's possible that one of the samples has some novel chemical or biological compound that could lead to a breakthrough discovery.

How can they say this without providing more background?

a few hundred bucks

able to look at microbes

also able to look at less micro level stuff, like maybe the thing i'm trying to solder or fix

is it wrong to solicit comments/recommendations here?

Great reporting - reading this NYT article gives me a little bit of the excitement that I normally only get from reading Quanta Magazine.

This seems unsupported. More likely is it's happened a large number of times, but has only established a lineage a handful of times.

wtf is happening to internet these days...

"The team — brought together, in part, by disruptions and despair over the Trump administration’s freezes to federal science funding — then made an exciting discovery."

Apparently this is the new way of life for Scientists under the Trump regime.

Sad.

Nytimes can't help itself. love it.

Also, cells can have scales? Amazing.