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Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga

A hallmark of self-organisation in living systems is their capacity to stabilise their own dynamics, often appearing to anticipate and act upon potential outcomes. Caulerpa brachypus is a marine green alga consisting of differentiated organs resembling leaves, stems and roots. While an individual ca...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Afik, Eldad, Liu, Toni J. B., Meyerowitz, Elliot M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10550971/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37793999
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41813-6
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author Afik, Eldad
Liu, Toni J. B.
Meyerowitz, Elliot M.
author_facet Afik, Eldad
Liu, Toni J. B.
Meyerowitz, Elliot M.
author_sort Afik, Eldad
collection PubMed
description A hallmark of self-organisation in living systems is their capacity to stabilise their own dynamics, often appearing to anticipate and act upon potential outcomes. Caulerpa brachypus is a marine green alga consisting of differentiated organs resembling leaves, stems and roots. While an individual can exceed a metre in size, it is a single multinucleated giant cell. Thus Caulerpa presents the mystery of morphogenesis on macroscopic scales in the absence of cellularization. The experiments reported here reveal self-organised waves of greenness — chloroplasts — that propagate throughout the alga in anticipation of the day-night light cycle. Using dynamical systems analysis we show that these waves are coupled to a self-sustained oscillator, and demonstrate their entrainment to light. Under constant conditions light intensity affects the natural period and drives transition to temporal disorder. Moreover, we find distinct morphologies depending on light temporal patterns, suggesting waves of chlorophyll could link biological oscillators to metabolism and morphogenesis in this giant single-celled organism.
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spelling pubmed-105509712023-10-06 Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga Afik, Eldad Liu, Toni J. B. Meyerowitz, Elliot M. Nat Commun Article A hallmark of self-organisation in living systems is their capacity to stabilise their own dynamics, often appearing to anticipate and act upon potential outcomes. Caulerpa brachypus is a marine green alga consisting of differentiated organs resembling leaves, stems and roots. While an individual can exceed a metre in size, it is a single multinucleated giant cell. Thus Caulerpa presents the mystery of morphogenesis on macroscopic scales in the absence of cellularization. The experiments reported here reveal self-organised waves of greenness — chloroplasts — that propagate throughout the alga in anticipation of the day-night light cycle. Using dynamical systems analysis we show that these waves are coupled to a self-sustained oscillator, and demonstrate their entrainment to light. Under constant conditions light intensity affects the natural period and drives transition to temporal disorder. Moreover, we find distinct morphologies depending on light temporal patterns, suggesting waves of chlorophyll could link biological oscillators to metabolism and morphogenesis in this giant single-celled organism. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10550971/ /pubmed/37793999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41813-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Afik, Eldad
Liu, Toni J. B.
Meyerowitz, Elliot M.
Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title_full Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title_fullStr Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title_full_unstemmed Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title_short Macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
title_sort macroscopic waves, biological clocks and morphogenesis driven by light in a giant unicellular green alga
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10550971/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37793999
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41813-6
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