The diatoms interact with the environment through the siliceous frustule. The total area of frustule perforations determines the ability of diatom to exchange nutrients, gases and other matters. The aim of the present study was to estimate the area of perforations on the valve surface of a centric diatom. In the paper we describe a method for the estimation of the area of perforations on a diatom valve using SEM images. The method is tested on valves of centric diatom Minidiscus vodyanitskiyi Lyakh et Bedoshvili. The results show that the total area of cribral pores is less than 5% of the total valve area. This value is consistent with the relative perforation of land plants leaves, which is less than 3%. We hypothesize that such small valve area occupied by perforations is usual for many other centric diatom species. To verify this hypothesis additional researches are necessary.
As a result of a SEM study of phytoplankton, the first data on centric diatom species composition in Bolshoye Toko Lake, Yakutia, were obtained. Ten species (Aulacoseira — 5, Cyclotella — 1, Discostella — 1, Handmannia — 1, Pliocaenicus — 1) were found, and one taxon from the genus Pliocaenicus was identified to the genus level. Of these, nine taxa are reported for the first time in the water bodies of the Aldan River basin and Discostella guslyakovyi in Yakutia.
AbstractDue to their abundance in the oceans, their extraordinary biodiversity and the increasing use for biotech applications, the study of diatom biology is receiving more and more attention in the recent years. One of the limitations in developing molecular tools for diatoms lies in the peculiar nature of their cell wall, that is made of silica and organic molecules and that hinders the application of standard methods for cell lysis required, for example, to extract organelles. In this study we present a protocol for intact nuclei isolation from diatoms that was successfully applied to three different species: two pennates, Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata and Phaeodactylum tricornutum, and one centric diatom species, Chaetoceros diadema. Intact nuclei were extracted by treatment with acidified NH4F solution combined to low intensity sonication pulses and separated from cell debris via FAC-sorting upon incubation with SYBR Green. Microscopy observations confirmed the integrity of isolated nuclei and high sensitivity DNA electrophoresis showed that genomic DNA extracted from isolated nuclei has low degree of fragmentation. This protocol has proved to be a flexible and versatile method to obtain intact nuclei preparations from different diatom species and it has the potential to speed up applications such as epigenetic explorations as well as single cell (“single nuclei”) genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics in different diatom species.
An experiment was performed on selected pennate diatom species collected from the well mixed waters of the Hooghly Estuary with the aim of distinguishing the ones with qualities to be employed as monitors of their ecosystem. The Hooghly Estuary is enriched with domestic, sewage and agricultural effluents and coastal upwelling along with tide-mediated advective circulation from the mangrove forests ensure concomitant nutrient pool replenishment in this ecoregion. There have been several attempts to establish certain centric diatom species as bioindicators in various parts of the world owing to their better responsiveness to sudden shifts in stoichiometry but hardly any with pennate diatoms. Pennate diatoms are typical benthic mat formers in the intertidal regions, on submerged surfaces and thus bear greater feasibility to be employed as accurate pointers to long term deviations in their respective ecosystems, in spite of the greater sensitivity of the centric diatoms. The study was carried out in laboratory controlled environment to minimize the interference from other extrinsic factors compromising the outcome and also due to the fact that such studies to be performed in natural conditions require a decent financial support and time to conclusively arrive upon the objectives. From the present endeavour it was inferred that Nitzschia sigmoidea, Pleurosigma angulatum and Ulnaria oxyrhyncus (formerly Synedra ulna var. oxyrhyncus) stood a good chance of being recruited as bioindicators to eutrophic well mixed estuaries, similar to the one they had been sampled from.
AbstractThe diatoms interact with the outer environment through the siliceous walls of a frustule. Because of that the surface area of the frustule determines the ability of diatoms to absorb and excrete material resources. Such as unicellular organisms exchange matter only through the pores in their cell wall, to find relationships between characteristics of material fluxes and surface area of microorganism cover that is penetrable for substance, it is necessary to estimate the total surface area of pores or a porosity – relative area of pores perforated frustule. In the paper we describe a method of estimating the porosity of a diatom valve using SEM images. The method is tested on SEM images of the valves of centric diatom Minidiscus vodyanitskiyi recently described from the Sea of Azov. The results show that the valves porosity is less than 5 % of the total valves area. This value is consistent with the relative perforation of land plants leaves, which is less than 3%. We hypothesize that such value of diatom valves porosity is usual for many other diatom species. To verify this hypothesis additional researches are necessary.
Diatoms are well known for the intricately patterned nanostructure of their silica-based cell walls. To date, the optical properties of diatom cell-wall ultrastructures have largely gone uncharacterized experimentally. Here we report the results of a detailed experimental investigation of the way in which light interacts with the ultrastructure of a representative centric diatom species,Coscinodiscus wailesii. Light interaction both with individual valves and whole bivalves of the diatomC. wailesiiwas measured. Significant sixfold symmetric diffraction through the valve ultrastructure was observed in transmission and quantified to efficiencies that were found to be strongly wavelength dependent; approximately 80% for red, 30% for green, and 20% for blue light. While these results may potentially offer insight into the role of periodic nanostructure in diatom selection, they are also important for consideration in the design of biomimetic optics-based diatom applications.
Two types of ice algal assemblages were found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence: assemblages composed predominantly of pennate diatoms (abundance > 98.0%) and assemblages with a high abundance of centric diatoms (abundance > 46.2%). The first type is similar to Arctic landfast ice algal assemblages with the pennate diatoms Nitzschia cylindrus, N. polaris, and Navicula kariana as dominant species. The second type is similar to drifting ice algal assemblages previously described from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with a percentage of centric diatom species > 46.2% due to the dominance of the planktonic diatom Thalassiosira nordenskioeldii. Species richness and the Shannon-Weaver index of diversity were low; density ranged from 104–106 × cells∙L−1 and was negatively correlated with percent centric diatoms. Results on the structure and the composition of the ice algal assemblages are related to ice type, i.e. landfast and drifting pack ice, and compared with ice algal assemblages from higher latitudes.
Using the TensorFlow Object Detection API, an approach to identifying and registering Baikal diatom species Synedra acus subsp. radians has been tested. As a result, a set of images was formed and training was conducted. It is shown that аfter 15000 training iterations, the total value of the loss function was obtained equal to 0,04. At the same time, the classification accuracy is equal to 95%, and the accuracy of construction of the bounding box is also equal to 95%.
NEW METHOD OF ESTIMATION OF THE RELATIVE AREA OF PERFORATIONS ON VALVES OF CENTRIC DIATOMS USING SEM IMAGES ON THE EXAMPLE OF MINIDISUS VODYANITSKIYI LYAKH ET BEDOSHVILI