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Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny org...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10662721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37988341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395 |
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author | Keeling, Patrick J. Eglit, Yana |
author_facet | Keeling, Patrick J. Eglit, Yana |
author_sort | Keeling, Patrick J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny organisms are like is abstract, and we lack tools that would help to describe them. In this Essay, we present a series of openly available technical diagrams that illustrate the diverse range of complex body plans of microbial eukaryotes (or “protists”), as well as an illustrated tree to show the vast diversity they encompass and how they are related to the more familiar macroscopic animals, fungi, and plants. These sorts of tools are desperately needed for teaching and communication about the microbial world, which is a pressingly important problem where much improvement is needed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10662721 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106627212023-11-21 Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity Keeling, Patrick J. Eglit, Yana PLoS Biol Essay Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny organisms are like is abstract, and we lack tools that would help to describe them. In this Essay, we present a series of openly available technical diagrams that illustrate the diverse range of complex body plans of microbial eukaryotes (or “protists”), as well as an illustrated tree to show the vast diversity they encompass and how they are related to the more familiar macroscopic animals, fungi, and plants. These sorts of tools are desperately needed for teaching and communication about the microbial world, which is a pressingly important problem where much improvement is needed. Public Library of Science 2023-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10662721/ /pubmed/37988341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395 Text en © 2023 Keeling, Eglit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Essay Keeling, Patrick J. Eglit, Yana Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title | Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title_full | Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title_fullStr | Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title_full_unstemmed | Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title_short | Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
title_sort | openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity |
topic | Essay |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10662721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37988341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT keelingpatrickj openlyavailableillustrationsastoolstodescribeeukaryoticmicrobialdiversity AT eglityana openlyavailableillustrationsastoolstodescribeeukaryoticmicrobialdiversity |