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Finding and characterizing new protist species is insightful for biology yet it is often ignored. As such, the number
of predicted protist species far outweigh those that are characterized, primarily because it is difficult to capture
and culture free-living cells. I am working on a system to make capturing and culturing novel protists
easier.
If you don’t know what protists are, you are missing out. Seriously. I am designing a database for beginners at
protist.info. Please do yourself a favor and learn about life far more
interesting and diverse than plants, fungi, and
animals combined. View the figure below and look up some
the groups:
Protists are microbial eukaryotes. Any eukaryote that is not a plant, animal, or fungus. Far more life exist than what you normally see. The first living cells were
relatively simplistic. A small group of these cells evolved into the eukaryotic lineage, single cells that are huge
and tend to organize complex processes into specialized compartments. Eukaryotic cells are also known for eating
smaller living cells, but instead of killing them, they enslave them. Some single celled protists eventually evolved
into giant multicellular organisms you know as plants and animals.
[What Protists Are Not]
[Protists Are Microbes Too]
In recent years microbes have received much deserved attention. This revealed the extreme diversity of bacteria and
their role both in the environment and inside other organisms. Protists seemed to gather less attention and it is
surprising the lack of researchers in protistology, as it is a field rich in the prospect of discovery. I believe
this stems largely from the lack of proper education about eukaryotes. In biology, most classes are mammal-centric, as
this is what medical research focuses on. But protists play major roles in aquatic and terrestrial environments as
well as the human microbiome. They range from parasitic and commensal relationships to free-living drivers of nutrient
cycles and stabilizers of the biosphere. Protists are the most understudied yet most phylogenetically diverse
eukaryotic life on the planet.
A major threat to increasing the resolution of life's history is extinction; it saddens me to think what is forever
lost to our knowledge. This risk is higher with invertebrates and microbes, which usually don’t leave a footprint to
study (unless you are a testate amoeba). With extinction events rapidly accelerating, it harrows me to think that there is undiscovered life out
there holding interesting developments for biologists everywhere. Out of fear for losing evidence, I prioritize
discovery, characterization, and development of novel model organisms to be used for experimentation.