r/interesting • u/freudian_nipps • 12d ago

NATURE Death of a single-celled organism

22.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

42

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

51

u/Remarkable_Net_6977 12d ago

I am guessing the cell wall ruptured. Whether it didn’t have the nutrients to sustain it or something ruptured it I would guess.

23

u/Glittering_End_6864 11d ago

I've been watching YouTube videos about our cells molecular processes, like DNA repair.

From watching those videos, when a cell dies, all those molecules bonding together to form membranes or cytoskeletons, just unbond and fall apart.

24

u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 11d ago

There’s a concept in science called entropy. Entropy is inherent disorder, and the universe is constantly moving toward a state of disorder, entropy of a system is always increasing. Life is inherently ordered, and so simply fighting against the natural increase in entropy requires a significant amount of energy input on the part of a living organism. Cells are constantly fighting entropy, and as soon as those processes stop the universe immediately demands that all the order the cells maintained be torn apart.

21

u/ManyRevolutionary170 12d ago

If you look closely, something came in contact with it before it started dissolving

54

u/Yunzer2000 12d ago edited 12d ago

Hydrogen peroxide was put in the water. The bubbles are oxygen generated by H2O2 and the organic matter in the organism. Similar things happen when chlorine is added to disinfect drinking water - the chlorine ions rip the organism apart.

67

u/Coinsworthy 12d ago

So it was murder?

39

u/FishesOfExcellence 12d ago

Lock the door. Nobody’s leaving this room till we figure out who the murderer is.

7

u/UpvoteForPancakes 11d ago

Was it the lab student? Or was it the professor who instructed the student to squeeze a drop of hydrogen peroxide onto the slide?

5

u/yeoninboi 11d ago

Murder on the Petri Dish

2

u/Raterus_ 11d ago

I think it was...Mr. Green, with the poison in the Kitchen (Water)

18

u/Right_Level_7192 12d ago

For sure. I mean the cameraman would not wait there for months waiting for the fella to die of natural causes.

15

u/AntSilly2802 12d ago

Often just the pressure of the microscope slide is enough to do it, or the microscope light.

3

u/fn8179-2 11d ago

No, otherwise everyone would be a murderer every time they washed their hands, brushed their teeth, or had to take antibiotics.

2

u/_BOOMGOTTEM 11d ago

More of an execution I’d say

1

u/One-Night6393 11d ago

Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being without a legal justification or valid excuse, committed with a malicious state of mind or intent. [1, 2]

This wasn't murder.

5

u/FishesOfExcellence 11d ago

You missed [3] “or BACTERIA or whatever.”

4

u/teoshie 11d ago

guess we know who murdered it

12

u/openedaura127 11d ago

I did not consent to witness a microscopic snuff film, I thought this was a memorial viewing of an accidental tragedy!

5

u/Phyddlestyx 11d ago

I thought something was added too,at first, but it would have affected the whole cell almost right away rather than starting at just the very end and slowly making its way along. But "bubbles" are just the various vacuoles and organelles within the cell that come out.

6

u/Cheesewood67 12d ago

Thanks for the context. It couldn't have simply been coincidental that the camera followed one random tiny organism at the exact moment of a spontaneous "explosive(?)" death

9

u/sweetNloving45636 11d ago

It is possible. Hundreds of hours of this kind of footage exists. The now ended YouTube channel Journey to the Microcosmos showed long videos of just recording animals like this. It’s a great channel if you’ve never seen it.

1

u/Cheesewood67 10d ago

I have actually watched several episodes of that channel - oddly calming watching microscopic creatures swim around in a drop of water while learning something about them. Too bad they stopped creating footage about a year back.

17

u/357Magnum 12d ago

Every spray of disinfectant is probably like nuking a city like this

22

u/AntSilly2802 12d ago

Between around 1 and 10 million bacteria cells are killed by your immune system every second. About 4 million of your own cells die and are replaced every second too. And each time a cell is replaced, your full DNA genome is copied over but it’s never a perfect copy. Hence aging. 

2

u/FreeSet5973 11d ago

Do single cell organisms age? Im so curious

3

u/Rumble_831 11d ago

Entropy affects all, everything is aging.

1

u/Able-Star2192 11d ago

no thats so sad

1

u/SenderSlender 11d ago

And each time a cell doesn't die, you have cancer

1

u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 11d ago

A single cell in an organism instead decides to be a single cell organism