the effect of the substitution of imported raw materials (corn and soyabeans) by local food resources (barley, white sorghum, triticale and horse bean) on the parameters of faciesfermentation and digestibility in the rumen of sheep was evaluated. four sicilo-sarde rams 4.8±0.5 years of age with an average live weight of 45.25±3.5 kg, permanently canulated in the rumen and housed in individual c...

 Phytoplankton growth and microzooplankton grazing were investigated at one station in the Homa Lagoon from February to January in 2006-2007. Our results showed significant seasonal variations in phytoplankton dynamics. Microzooplankton was mainly composed of dinoflagellates and tintinnid ciliates and nauplii. Microzooplankton grazing increased with increasing of temperature. Grazing ra...

Feeding of ciliates on suspended food particles is complex and relies typically coordinated motion in bands transversal rows cilia known as membranelles. We explore model the fluid dynamics feeding flow particle retention upstream collecting that use a single membranelle band to both generate flow, retain particles, transport them cell mouth.

In eukaryotes, the polypeptide release factor 1 (eRF1) is involved in translation termination at all three stop codons. However, the mechanism for decoding stop codons remains unknown. A direct interaction of eRF1 with the stop codons has been postulated. Recent studies focus on eRF1 from ciliates in which some stop codons are reassigned to sense codons. Using an in vitro assay based on mammali...

Oxygenminimum zones (OMZs) are often characterized by nitrogen-to-phosphorus (N:P) ratios far lower than the canonical Redfield ratio. Whereas, the importance of variable stoichiometry in phytoplankton has long been recognized, variations in zooplankton stoichiometry have received much less attention. Here we combine observations from two shipboard mesocosm nutrient enrichment experiments with ...

Many scuticociliatid ciliates are regarded as devastating pathogens in aquaculture. Among these, Pseudocohnilembus persalinus is a facultative pathogen that often results in refractory diseases of mariculture fish. Although traditional silver staining methods have been successfully used to identify these ciliates, their identification is hampered by their small size and their morphological simi...

Species loss can result in secondary extinctions and changes in ecosystem functions at distant trophic levels. Such effects of species loss are predicted to be affected by both the number of species lost within a trophic level (horizontal diversity) and the number of trophic levels lost (vertical diversity). We experimentally manipulated horizontal and vertical diversity within an aquatic insec...

Due to their well-defined pathways of vesicle trafficking and manyfold mutants ciliates have served as good model systems. Further studies required the development of databases, now available for Paramecium and Tetrahymena. A variety of key players have been identified and characterized based on BLAST search, domain analysis, localization, and gene-silencing studies. They include NSF (N-ethylma...

Abstract An important group of protozooplankton, the ciliates, are a crucial component aquatic food webs. They main grazers on bacteria and algae transferring carbon to higher levels web (metazooplankton fish fry). Changes in quality quantity protozooplankton can modify metazooplankton, especially predatory copepods, causing changes energy transfer matter cycle. Observable climate change is one...

We investigate in this paper a simple intramolecular model for gene assembly in ciliates. Unlike the general intramolecular model, the folds that a micronuclear chromosome may form to assemble the genes is very restricted (minimal) here: between any two pointers there may be at most one coding block. It has been known that the general model is universal, being able to assemble any gene pattern ...