Alga in Biological News

Montana State team finds Yellowstone alga that detoxifies arsenic

... scientists have found a Yellowstone National Park alga that's tougher. The alga -- a simple one-celled algae called ... foods and herbicides, the scientists said. The alga and how it detoxifies arsenic are described in a ...

Solar-powered sea-slugs live like plants, prof says

... functioning," he adds. "The slug needs the alga to mature and complete its life cycle," Manhart says. "It is totally dependent on the alga to survive. Once the slug has acquired a ... plastids. Manhart says that if the slug and the alga both brave the ever-changing climatic conditions, ...

Green algae -- the nexus of plant/animal ancestry

... Stanford, CAGenes of a tiny, single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii may contain ... including humans. The research shows that this alga has maintained many genes that were lost during ... years ago no one would have guessed that an alga would have retained many of the functions we ...

Green alga genome project catalogs carbon capture machinery

... CREEK, -The genome analysis of a tiny green alga has uncovered hundreds of genes that are uniquely ... of the journal Science. The single-celled alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, while less than a ... to its large research community as "Chlamy", the alga is a powerful model system for the study of ...

Study involving more than 100 scientists provides new insights on green algae

... Science a "gold mine" of data on a tiny green alga called Chlamydomonas, with implications for human ... Biology Institute, who has studied the green alga for 20 years. "We know the words and now we want ... and other animals. The scientists report that the alga has maintained many genes that were lost during ...

Cause of mussel poisoning identified

... just like other voracious protozoa and mussels. They isolated a small alga from the North Sea off the Scottish east coast and described it as a new ... researchers are interested in quite fundamental questions: why does the alga produce these azaspiracid toxins and what are their ecological functions? ...

Iowa State professor's genome research published in the latest issue of Science

... and annotated the genome of the green algae chlamydomonas, a single-celled alga that has traits from both animals and plants. There may be lots of uses ... chlorophyll and also flagella to help it move. Another reason the alga was sequenced is that it is both a simple organism and a classic genetic ...

'Green' energy from algae

... into biomass, the efficiency being five times higher than that in open ponds." The plates in usual photo-bioreactors are arranged verti-cally. "Every alga sees a little bit less light, but the plant is operated at increased efficiency", emphasizes the biologist and electrical engineer. Modern designs ...

Unlikely life thriving at Antarctica's Blood Falls

... the earliest explorers noted the massive red stain at the snout of the glacier and speculated as to what may have caused it. Some guessed that red alga was responsible for the bright color. "In fact, the red color is a result of all that Fe(II) produced by bacteria," said Anbar. "When the Fe(II)-rich ...

Genes from tiny marine algae suggest unsuspected avenues for new research

... key aspects of this genetic "Morse code." The paper also compares Micromonas ' genes with genes found in other organisms. A microscopic alga with leaves? Worden and her fellow researchers discovered that Micromonas carries a significant number of genes that are not found in the ...

Scientists discover 'hot spot' for toxic HABS off Washington coastline

... experiments onboard research vessels and in their laboratories to better understand the factors that initiate and sustain the growth of this toxic alga and determine why it produces a deadly biotoxin. This naturally-produced biotoxin, domoic acid, can accumulate in shellfish, crabs and some fish. ...

Success for first outdoor, large-scale algae-to-biofuel research project in Nevada

... feedstock, which produces more than half its weight in oil as well as developing a practical process to grow, concentrate and harvest the algae. The alga variety harvested was selected and cultured by the University, and future varieties will be developed by the University. Nevada researchers and ...

Carnegie's Arthur Grossman receives Gilbert Morgan Smith medal

... was established through the Helen P. Smith Fund. Grossman is a pioneer in studying a broad range of topics about Chlamydomonas, a tiny green alga affectionately called Chlamy, which is present in soil and freshwater. He also brought Chlamy into the age of genomics by leading the project that ...

Billion-year revision of plant evolution timeline may stem from discovery of lignin in seaweed

... and colleagues describe using powerful chemical and microscopic anatomy techniques to identify and localize lignin within cell walls of a red alga that thrives along the wave-swept California coast. Martone conducted the work described in the paper while a graduate student and postdoctoral ...

Diatom genome helps explain success in trapping excess carbon in oceans

... diatom uses urea to store nitrogen, not to eliminate it like animals do, because nitrogen is a precious nutrient in the ocean. What's more, the tiny alga draws the best of both worldsit can convert fat into sugar, as well as sugar into fatextremely useful in times of nutrient shortage. The team ...

Underwater microscope helps prevent shellfish poisoning along Gulf Coast of Texas

... Institutes lab in the Mission Bay Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve. Their principal goal was to observe Karenia brevis, another toxic alga that blooms periodically in the Gulf and can lead to neurotoxic shellfish poisoning. The research team would like to observe the next K. brevis bloom ...

Moss genome shows how plants invaded the land and learned to survive heat and drought

... but reproduce via spores. Mishler said that Physcomitrella is well-placed phylogenetically to fill in the large gap between the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas, also sequenced by the Joint Genome Institute, and the flowering plants. "Having the full Physcomitrella genome available to the ...

DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program delivers first moss genome

... in flowering plants. Mishler said that Physcomitrella is well placed phylogenetically to fill in the large gap between the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas, also sequenced by DOE JGI, and the flowering plants. Having the full Physcomitrella genome available to the public greatly ...

Scientists learn structure of enzyme in unusual virus

... structure of an unusual viral enzyme that is required in the assembly of new viruses. The Paramecium bursaria chlorella virus infects a green alga called chlorella, transferring its DNA into host cells. Once inside the chlorella, the virus DNA makes an enzyme called glycosyltransferase, which is ...

'Cellular antennae' on algae give clues to how human cells receive signals

... alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which has two individual cilia. This alga allows researchers to manipulate genes and study the resulting effects on ... Southwestern researchers used a mutant temperature-sensitive strain of the alga that behaved normally at lower temperatures. At higher temperatures, ...

Living with salt

... with high salinities, but are actually "addicted" to them. However, the alga Dunaliella salina is an organism of a different streak: it is able to grow ... The researchers hope that the knowledge gleaned from their study of a tiny alga might provide the basis for designing new drugs that could target enzymes ...

A new male-specific gene in algae unveils an origin of male and female

... of an oogamous multicellular green algae species, Pleodorina starrii, and one of the mating types of its isogamous ancestor, the unicellular alga Clamydomonas reinhardtii. In C. reinhardtii, isogamous sexual reproduction occurs through "plus" (MT+) and "minus" (MT-) mating types. MT- ...

The diversity of marine life in the Gulf of Maine region is much greater than previously thought

... more than 400 billion diatoms. (Cerullo, M., 1999, Sea Soup, p. 14). The oldest described species in the register is from 1753, a green alga called Ulva lactuca, commonly known as sea lettuce. The newest organisms to science are five species of flatworms which were described in 2003. ...

Algal protein in worm neurons allows remote control of behavior by light

... Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, also in Frankfurt. In their new study, the researchers employed a light-sensitive protein from the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This protein, channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), sits in cell membranes, where it gates the flow of certain ions from one side of ...