What's the News: Spotted salamander embryos, a recent study found, have green algae living inside their cells. While scientists have long known that the two species are symbiotic, each helping the other to survive, the new findings show that the arrangement is, in the researchers' words, "more intimate than previously reported." In fact, it's the first such organism-within-cell partnership---known as endosymbiosis---ever observed in vertebrates. How the Heck:
Spotting a cell within a cell isn't easy. The researchers used fluorescent techniques to spot the algae, since their chlorophyll glows under certain types of light, and RNA probes to measure whether the algae's genetic material---and therefore, the algae cells themselves---were still intact.
Salamanders lay their eggs in ponds, also home to algae of the species Oophila amblystomatis, whose genus means "egg-loving." It may be that that's when the algae burrows into the cells of the salamander embryos. Alternatively, parents might pass the ...
