Haiku for P. leiognathi
Blue lights enchanting,
Piscean mating baubles,
Glowing fish belly.
by JeM YinJoy
How to pronounce Photobacterium leiognathi.
Photobacterium leiognathi
(Foto-bak-tear-y-um lee-oog-nă-thĭ)
The Spiritual Significance
The spiritual lessons taught by P. Leiognathi literally shine through with its light producing nature and its cooperative lifestyle. P. leiognathi is the matchmaker of microbial symbionts because in exchange for its security and nutrients it makes the light that allows the host fish to communicate with potential mates by winking and blinking its special bladder.
Since P. Leiognathi needs a quorum (a quota of cells) to form this light, the pony fish gives P. Leiognathi a custom-designed nook inside its body for its microbial “shadchanits”, filling the specialized organ to the brim with these blue-green microscopic pearls of bioluminescence.
P. Leiognathi is a product of its own environment, and it closely aligns with it, requiring salt and other marine elements to grow on agar media. This microbe also teaches the “use it or lose it” philosophy in that it uses flagella when free-living, and loses its motility when inside the host.
The Microbiology
Photobacterium leiognathi are bacteria that produce bioluminescence in the oceans, and that live within some types of fish, giving them the ability to use them as biological “flash-lights.”
Shape and Size
P. leiognathi is a gram-negative, coccobacillus-straight shaped, flagellated bacterium. P. leiognathi has no pigmentation and appears white or colorless unless found in colonies where it does produce bioluminescence.
Habitat
P. leiognathi lives as a free-living organism in temperate marine water or in a mutualistic association with pony fish.
How it eats
P. leiognathi is a facultative anaerobic chemoorganotrophic bacterium. This means that it can live either under oxygen or non-oxygen conditions, and it means that it uses organic carbon as a carbon source.