Charophytes is a green algal group closely related to land plants. We investigated the effects of antibiotics that interfere with peptidoglycan biosynthesis on chloroplast division in the desmid Closterium peracerosum-strigosum-littorale complex. To detect cells just after division, we used colchicine, which inhibits Closterium cell elongation after division. Although normal Closterium cells ha...

Using high resolution molecular technique of atomic force microscopy, we address the extracellular polymer production of Adriatic diatom Cylindrotheca closterium analyzed at the single cell level and the supramolecular organization of gel phase isolated from the Northern Adriatic macroaggregates. Our results revealed that extracellular polysaccharides freshly produced by marine diatoms can self...

During emersion, diatoms are exposed to sunlight (with UVB) on tidal flats, where the salinity may increase as a result of evaporation. In order to investigate whether a combination of UV radiation and desiccation would cause oxidative stress under such conditions, an experiment has been carried out with the diatom Cylindrotheca closterium. Cell division rates, photosynthetic efficiencies, pigm...

One challenge constraining the use of microalgae in the food and biofuels industry is growth and lipid accumulation. Microalgae with high growth characteristics are more likely to originate from the local environment. However, to be commercially effective, in addition to high growth microalgae must also have high lipid productivities and contain the desired fatty acids for their intended use. W...

Lipid productivity is a critical variable for evaluating algal species for biodiesel production. The pennate diatom Nitzschia closterium (W. Sm.) isolated from the local water body of Madurai was cultivated in four different media (WCg, Csi, F/2 and Diatom medium) and screened for the presence of neutral lipid content using Nile red fluorescent dye. The relative abundance of lipid content was e...

Conjugation-regulating pheromones were analyzed in homothallic Closterium for the first time. Members of the Closterium peracerosum-strigosum-littorale complex are unicellular charophycean algae in which there are two modes of zygospore formation: heterothallism and homothallism. A homothallic strain of Closterium (designation, kodama20) forms selfing zygospores via the conjugation of two siste...

We obtained genetic information on sexual reproduction of the Closterium peracerosum-strigosum-littorale complex, a unicellular charophycean alga. Normalized cDNA libraries were constructed from cells in the sexual reproduction process, and a total of 1190 5'-end expressed sequence tags were established. Since 604 of these ESTs were classified into 174 non-redundant sequences, these 1190 ESTs i...