Life as Metaphor

 A very "simple" and graceful cyanobacteria (a fave of mine). Anabaena is a filament multicelled organism that consists of 2 types of cells: vegetative cells and heterocysts.  The vegetative cells are capable of photosynthesis (with cholorophyll A), and reproduce in a single filament, when their population reaches 9-15 cells long, one of their cells transforms into a heterocyst.


(Lee, R.E., 2008)

The heterocysts grow additional cell walls (3, all tolled) and become unable to photosynthesize; they have to absorb the sucrose of the filament's vegetative cells. However, the heterocysts become capable of fixating nitrogen, and passing this onto it's filament via amino acids, and also leaks this fixated nitrogen into the surrounding area. As such, Anabanea spp. have been known to form symbiotic relationships with particular plant life: 


(Crawford, R.M.M., 2014)

A couple of days ago I was able to take some pics of my Anabaena cultures. Here is some of my green babies! 

 
(photo A & B)


(photo C & D)

Because of the heterocysts' additional cell walls, they become hydrophobic (hyperoxidizing, form little "bubbles"). Their production of the ammonium ions (while fixating the nitrogen) that the heterocysts create, are also prone to fill with negative ions when they are isolated and unable to pass the ammonium ions onto their vegetative cells; as we can witness in photo D, where the isolated heterocyst begins to distort the visible physical properties of the water that surrounds it.

An interesting neighbor of this group of Anabaena is a phytoplankton (that was moving too quickly to get a clear photo of, unfortunately). However we can at the least tell that this was not a cyanobacteria. It appears to be a more "yellow green" color, suggesting that it has both chlorophyll A and chlorophyll B, so we can guess that it is more likely to be related to green algae or the plant kingdom, or possibly related to a protist that contains chlorophyll (i.e. Euglena, etc.) (Speer, B., 1995)


(photo E)


Shalom! - Ulla & co.



Crawford, R.M.M. (2014). Tundra-Taiga Biology: Human, Plant, and Animal Survival in the Arctic. [Image used]. pg. 15; Oxford University Press. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford; United Kingdom.

Lee, R.E. (2008). Phycology. [Image used]. pg. 48; Cambridge University Press. The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge; United Kingdom.

Speer, B. (1995). Photosynthetic Pigments. Retrieved from: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss3/pigments.html

 i've been having a hard time with the anabaena.... in my old sample, the color of the algae has been turning brownish, and not giving me any little bubbles (oxygen)... i knew this had to be related to contamination of the dead beetles, but had really been hoping that the algae just "coped" with the contaminants, but it was going downhill..

it hit me today that i shouldn't have the algae sitting IN a freshwater alga-gro (it is basically fertilized water!), so i had a plan set up....

i let the algae settle down in the jar (yesterday), made sure to not move the jar around, and then when it was just anabaena on the bottom of the jar and blurry-ick water above it, i used a HUGE syringe to suck out the water..... i then replaced it with just filtered drinking water, and hope that i would see changes in a few days or so...

but surprise surprise, i saw a BIG improvement today (the very next day!)... so i am pasting my fotos behind the cut.... note, that the first foto shows the jar yesterday (you can also see a tiny sample next to it, of healthy "blue green" colored anabaena)
and the other pictures were taken today....

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