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Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene

BACKGROUND: Most free-living ciliates reproduce by equal fission or budding during vegetative growth. In certain ciliates, reproduction occurs inside the cyst wall, viz. reproductive cysts, but more complex reproductive strategies have generally been thought to be confined to parasitic or symbiotic...

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Autores principales: Long, Hongan, Zufall, Rebecca A
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873486/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-108
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author Long, Hongan
Zufall, Rebecca A
author_facet Long, Hongan
Zufall, Rebecca A
author_sort Long, Hongan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Most free-living ciliates reproduce by equal fission or budding during vegetative growth. In certain ciliates, reproduction occurs inside the cyst wall, viz. reproductive cysts, but more complex reproductive strategies have generally been thought to be confined to parasitic or symbiotic species, e.g. Radiophrya spp. RESULTS: In addition to equal fission, asymmetric binary division and reproductive cysts were discovered in the free-living bacterivorous scuticociliate Glauconema trihymene Thompson, 1966. Asymmetric division is an innate physiological state that can be induced by sufficient food, and the higher the food concentration, the longer the asymmetric division persists. During asymmetric division, nuclear and somatic structures divide with transiently arrested cytokinesis and variable positioning of macronuclei. Phylogenetic analysis, based on the small subunit of ribosomal DNA (SSU rDNA) sequences, showed that the G. trihymene isolate studied here nests with typical scuticociliates and is paraphyletic to both the symbiotic apostome and astome ciliates, some of which also produce progeny by asymmetric division. CONCLUSIONS: The asymmetric division in G. trihymene has no precedent among undisturbed free-living ciliates. The coexistence of multiple modes of reproduction may represent a previously undescribed reproductive strategy for ciliates living on food patches in coastal waters. This may also be indicative of similar reproductive strategies among other polyphenic ciliates, which have not been intensively studied. Asymmetric division provides a special opportunity for studying ciliates' phenotypic plasticity and may also illuminate the origins of multicellularity.
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spelling pubmed-28734862010-05-20 Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene Long, Hongan Zufall, Rebecca A BMC Microbiol Research article BACKGROUND: Most free-living ciliates reproduce by equal fission or budding during vegetative growth. In certain ciliates, reproduction occurs inside the cyst wall, viz. reproductive cysts, but more complex reproductive strategies have generally been thought to be confined to parasitic or symbiotic species, e.g. Radiophrya spp. RESULTS: In addition to equal fission, asymmetric binary division and reproductive cysts were discovered in the free-living bacterivorous scuticociliate Glauconema trihymene Thompson, 1966. Asymmetric division is an innate physiological state that can be induced by sufficient food, and the higher the food concentration, the longer the asymmetric division persists. During asymmetric division, nuclear and somatic structures divide with transiently arrested cytokinesis and variable positioning of macronuclei. Phylogenetic analysis, based on the small subunit of ribosomal DNA (SSU rDNA) sequences, showed that the G. trihymene isolate studied here nests with typical scuticociliates and is paraphyletic to both the symbiotic apostome and astome ciliates, some of which also produce progeny by asymmetric division. CONCLUSIONS: The asymmetric division in G. trihymene has no precedent among undisturbed free-living ciliates. The coexistence of multiple modes of reproduction may represent a previously undescribed reproductive strategy for ciliates living on food patches in coastal waters. This may also be indicative of similar reproductive strategies among other polyphenic ciliates, which have not been intensively studied. Asymmetric division provides a special opportunity for studying ciliates' phenotypic plasticity and may also illuminate the origins of multicellularity. BioMed Central 2010-04-13 /pmc/articles/PMC2873486/ /pubmed/20388205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-108 Text en Copyright ©2010 Long and Zufall; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Long, Hongan
Zufall, Rebecca A
Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title_full Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title_fullStr Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title_full_unstemmed Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title_short Diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate Glauconema trihymene
title_sort diverse modes of reproduction in the marine free-living ciliate glauconema trihymene
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873486/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-108
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