Julia Van Etten transformed an $80 motel room in Nags Head, North Carolina, into an improvised laboratory, leading to the identification of two previously unknown species of microscopic amoebae. These new organisms, named Paulinella marae and Paulinella murrayi, represent a significant expansion of scientific understanding, achieved through unconventional means.
Van Etten, an evolutionary biologist who joined the University of Maryland as an assistant professor in 2026, made her initial discovery in May 2021. She was visiting the Outer Banks with her family when she collected a water sample from a roadside marsh. Her equipment included a $300 hobby-grade microscope and a $198 camera, part of her personal “Couch Microscopy project.”
Within that simple sample, she observed two minute cells, each approximately 15 micrometres long. These were unlike anything she had encountered before. Subsequent analysis confirmed they belonged to two distinct, undescribed species within the rare photosynthetic amoeba genus Paulinella.
Unconventional Methods, Real Discoveries
The work quickly grew into a broader investigation, drawing in other researchers like Andrew Willoughby, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, and John Burns of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. They continued to examine samples from Roanoke Sound in Nags Head, an area they'd been studying since 2021. The team conducted much of their analysis directly within the motel room.
Their methods were notably resourceful. Scientists used pulled Pasteur pipettes, standard micropipettes, and even tools crafted by supergluing toothbrush bristles onto colored pencils to isolate individual cells. These selected cells were then prepared for culturing, genomic analysis, and scanning electron microscopy, demonstrating that foundational scientific work doesn't always require vast institutional resources.
The Paulinella genus proved exceptionally uncommon in their samples. Researchers rarely encountered more than a single cell in any given drop of water. The two new species exhibited clear physical differences, including variations in size and the specific arrangement and orientation of their silica scales.
P. marae, for instance, possesses an elongated shell-like structure, measuring between 15 and 19.1 micrometres in length. These cells were found thriving in brackish water, with salinity levels ranging from approximately 10 to 14 at the North Carolina site. Both species were observed at the same location over several years, consistently remaining rare. Despite their efforts, establishing a long-term axenic culture proved unsuccessful, though some cells managed to survive and divide for periods up to about a month in filtered ambient water and culture medium.
Expanding the Known World
This discovery has increased the number of known photosynthetic Paulinella species from four to six. Researchers suggest that observations from hobby microscopists and naturalists indicate these organisms might be far more widespread than current limited scientific records suggest, highlighting the value of independent observation.
The study holds particular significance because Paulinella offers a relatively recent example of primary endosymbiosis. This is the process where one organism incorporates another, eventually forming a permanent biological relationship. Photosynthetic Paulinella acquired a photosynthetic organelle from a cyanobacterial endosymbiont roughly 100 million years ago.
This makes the group an invaluable subject for understanding how an acquired organism becomes fully integrated into its host's biology. The University of Maryland noted this process is analogous to the much older primary endosymbiotic event that shaped the evolution of algae and land plants over a billion years ago.
Van Etten’s broader research focuses on horizontal processes, specifically the movement of DNA between organisms and its evolutionary impact. Her team analyzed chromatophore and mitochondrial genomes, revealing broadly conserved gene content alongside structural differences, including genome rearrangements and inversion events. Phylogenetic analyses also showed discrepancies between evolutionary trees derived from nuclear and organelle data, which researchers attributed to factors like substitution saturation and limited taxon sampling.
The findings were published on September 4, 2026, in the Journal of Phycology, under the title “Crawling under the radar: Two novel Paulinella species expand knowledge about the ecology and evolution of a primary plastid-containing amoeba lineage.” Researchers believe the North Carolina site could become a crucial location for future studies into Paulinella ecology, population genetics, and evolution. This individual initiative has opened new avenues for scientific inquiry.