Credit: Roland Hatzenpichler
While typically thought of as solitary life forms, microbes frequently aggregate to form dense cell clusters. This often serves to achieve a common goal that cannot be reached by individual cells acting alone. The depicted cell consortia are composed of archaea and bacteria that, by combining their individual metabolic powers, together achieve oxidation of the greenhouse gas methane in the absence of oxygen. For the first time, these consortia have now been analyzed for their protein synthesis activity under a variety of conditions. In this image, nucleic acids within individual cells are stained in blue. Green color indicates that new proteins have been made. The scale bar equals 10 micrometer, or 1/8th the width of a human hair.