World's Largest Bacteria Discovered in Guadeloupe

Scientists say they have discovered the world's largest variety of bacteria in the mangroves of Guadeloupe, pictured in this photo from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pierre-Yves PASCAL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/AFP
Scientists say they have discovered the world's largest variety of bacteria in the mangroves of Guadeloupe, pictured in this photo from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pierre-Yves PASCAL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/AFP
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World's Largest Bacteria Discovered in Guadeloupe

Scientists say they have discovered the world's largest variety of bacteria in the mangroves of Guadeloupe, pictured in this photo from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pierre-Yves PASCAL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/AFP
Scientists say they have discovered the world's largest variety of bacteria in the mangroves of Guadeloupe, pictured in this photo from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pierre-Yves PASCAL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/AFP

You can see it with the naked eye and pick it up with a pair of tweezers -- not bad for a single bacteria.

Scientists say they have discovered the world's largest variety in the mangroves of Guadeloupe -- and it puts its peers to shame, AFP reported.

At up to two centimeters (three-quarters of an inch), "Thiomargarita magnifica" is not only around 5,000 times bigger than most bacteria -- it boasts a more complex structure, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.

The discovery "shakes up a lot of knowledge" in microbiology, Olivier Gros, professor of biology at the University of the Antilles and co-author of the study, told AFP.

In his laboratory in the Caribbean island group city of Pointe-a-Pitre, he marveled at a test tube containing strands that look like white eyelashes.

"At first I thought it was anything but a bacterium because something two centimeters (in size) just couldn't be one", he said.

The researcher first spotted the strange filaments in a patch of sulfur-rich mangrove sediment in 2009.

Techniques including electronic microscopy revealed it was a bacterial organism, but there was no guarantee it was a single cell.

'As tall as Mount Everest'
Molecular biologist Silvina Gonzalez-Rizzo, from the same laboratory, found it belonged to the Thiomargarita family, a bacterial genus known to use sulphides to grow. And a researcher in Paris suggested they were indeed dealing with just one cell.

But a first attempt at publication in a scientific journal a few years later was aborted.

"We were told: 'This is interesting, but we lack the information to believe you'," Gros said, adding that they needed stronger images to provide proof.

Then a young researcher, Jean-Marie Volland, managed to study the bacterium with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, run by the University of California.

With financial backing and access to some of the best tools in the field, Volland and his colleagues began building up a picture of the colossal bacteria.

It was clearly enormous by bacterial standards -- scaled up to human proportions, it would be like meeting someone "as tall as Mount Everest", Volland said.

Specialist 3D microscope images finally made it possible to prove that the entire filament was indeed a single cell.

But they also helped Volland make a "completely unexpected" discovery.

Normally, a bacterium's DNA floats freely in the cell. But in the giant species, it is compacted in small structures surrounded by a membrane, he explained.

This DNA compartmentalisation is "normally a feature of human, animal and plant cells, complex organisms... but not bacteria," Volland said.

Future research will have to determine if these characteristics are unique to Thiomargarita magnifica, or if they can be found in other species of bacteria, Gros said.



Google Hires Windsurf Execs in $2.4 Billion Deal to Advance AI Coding Ambitions

FILE PHOTO: A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
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Google Hires Windsurf Execs in $2.4 Billion Deal to Advance AI Coding Ambitions

FILE PHOTO: A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

Alphabet's Google has hired several key staff members from AI code generation startup Windsurf, the companies announced on Friday, in a surprise move following an attempt by its rival OpenAI to acquire the startup.

Google is paying $2.4 billion in license fees as part of the deal to use some of Windsurf's technology under non-exclusive terms, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. Google will not take a stake or any controlling interest in Windsurf, the person added.

Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some members of the coding tool's research and development team will join Google's DeepMind AI division, Reuters reported.

The deal followed months of discussions Windsurf was having with OpenAI to sell itself in a deal that could value it at $3 billion, highlighting the interest in the code-generation space which has emerged as one of the fastest-growing AI applications, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in June.

OpenAI could not be immediately reached for a comment.

The former Windsurf team will focus on agentic coding initiatives at Google DeepMind, primarily working on the Gemini project.

"We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," Google said in a statement.

The unusual deal structure marks a win for backers for Windsurf, which has raised $243 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks and General Catalyst, and was last valued at $1.25 billion one year ago, according to PitchBook.

Windsurf investors will receive liquidity through the license fee and retain their stakes in the company, sources told Reuters.

'ACQUIHIRE' DEALS

Google's surprise swoop mirrors its deal in August 2024 to hire key employees from chatbot startup Character.AI.

Big Tech peers, including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, have similarly taken to these so-called acquihire deals, which some have criticized as an attempt to evade regulatory scrutiny.

Microsoft struck a $650 million deal with Inflection AI in March 2024, to use the AI startup's models and hire its staff, while Amazon hired AI firm Adept's co-founders and some of its team last June.

Meta took a 49% stake in Scale AI in June in the biggest test yet of this increasing form of business partnerships.

Unlike acquisitions that would give the buyer a controlling stake, these deals do not require a review by US antitrust regulators. However, they could probe the deal if they believe it was structured to avoid those requirements or harm competition. Many of the deals have since become the subject of regulatory probes.

The development comes as tech giants, including Alphabet and Meta, aggressively chase high-profile acquisitions and offer multi-million-dollar pay packages to attract top talent in the race to lead the next wave of AI.

Windsurf's head of business, Jeff Wang, has been appointed its interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, vice president of global sales, will be president, effective immediately.

The majority of Windsurf's roughly 250 employees will remain with the company, which has announced plans to prioritize innovation for its enterprise clients.