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Nobody wants to be average. But for a long time, scientists have found it convenient to think of bacterial cells as just that: "average."

Models based on an average cell are useful, but they may not accurately describe how individual cells really work. In a new paper in PLOS Genetics, a team of biologists and physicists from Washington University in St. Louis and Purdue University use actual single-cell data to update the framework for understanding the relationship between cell growth, DNA replication and division in a bacterial system.

NEW YORK: In a Caribbean mangrove forest, scientists have discovered a species of bacteria that grows to the size and shape of a human eyelash. These cells are the largest bacteria ever observed, thousands of times bigger than more familiar bacteria such as Escherichia coli.

Scientists have discovered the world’s largest bacterium in a Caribbean mangrove swamp. Most bacteria are microscopic, but this one is so big it can be seen with the naked eye. The thin white filament, approximately the size of a human eyelash, is “by far the largest bacterium known to date,” said Jean-Marie Volland, a marine…

At about 2 centimeters in length, Thiomargarita magnifica tests scientists’ notions of how large microbes can grow.