An international team of scientists has recently described the world’s largest bacterium, which was discovered among the mangroves of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in 2009. Measuring over one centimeter in length, Thiomargarita magnifica is over 5,000 times larger than most of the other known bacteria. “Most bacterial cells are microscopic, and measure around two thousandths of a millimeter in length,” said study lead author Jean-Marie Volland, an expert in Microbial Biology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “While there are some exceptionally sized bacteria which can measure...