Life can be so intricate and novel that even a single cell
can pack a few surprises, according to a study led by Princeton University
researchers.
The pond-dwelling, single-celled organism Oxytricha
trifallax has the remarkable ability to break its own DNA into nearly a
quarter-million pieces and rapidly reassemble those pieces when it's time to
mate, the researchers report in the journal Cell. The organism internally stores
its genome as thousands of scrambled, encrypted gene pieces. Upon mating with
another of its kind, the organism rummages through these jumbled genes and DNA
segments to piece together more than 225,000 tiny strands of DNA. This all
happens in about 60 hours.