@tardibabe These must be the clearest images I caught of these blue whales from the microverse 💜 it’s most certainly one of my favourite single celled organisms 🥰
These beauties are called Stentor coeruleus and are amongst the most admired and popular ciliates around. They measure around 1 mm, which makes it possible to observe them with naked eyes and they possess a blue-green pigment named stentorin. Stentorin plays a major role in light detection and defence mechanisms. When Stentor is being threatened by a predator, the toxin from the stentorin pigment granules are released in the environment, which cause the predator to retreat and gives a chance for S. coeruleus to escape!
The oral aperture is spiral-shaped and has thousands of small specialized cilia, which move together to create a vortex that captures food particles, bringing them directly to the mouth. These particles will then get digested in special structures called food vacuoles, which are full of digestive enzymes. They’re basically primitive stomachs! You can see some small green dots inside the Stentor which are some algae trapped in those food vacuoles and are being digested.
The macro nucleus appears as small white bubbles linked together resembling beads on a string, they’re very clear in the second video, looking like Stentor wanted to dress up and wear a pearl necklace for a special occasion🥰. This macro nucleus contains DNA that is necessary for reproduction and regeneration. The bigger this unicellular organism is, the more copies of its whole genome it has. That way it can regenerate from small pieces when it gets damaged. Only a small piece of DNA is necessary to form a whole new healthy Stentor!
Video taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam adapter 🔬
References:
Miyake et al. (2001) "Defense function of pigment granules in Stentor coeruleus", Europ. J. Protistol. 37, pp. 77-88.
Slabodnick, Mark M et al. “The Macronuclear Genome of Stentor coeruleus Reveals Tiny Introns in a Giant Cell.” Current biology : CB vol. 27,4 (2017): 569-575
Slabodnick, Mark M., and Wallace F. Marshall. "Stentor coeruleus." Current Biology 2
These beauties are called Stentor coeruleus and are amongst the most admired and popular ciliates around. They measure around 1 mm, which makes it possible to observe them with naked eyes and they possess a blue-green pigment named stentorin. Stentorin plays a major role in light detection and defence mechanisms. When Stentor is being threatened by a predator, the toxin from the stentorin pigment granules are released in the environment, which cause the predator to retreat and gives a chance for S. coeruleus to escape!
The oral aperture is spiral-shaped and has thousands of small specialized cilia, which move together to create a vortex that captures food particles, bringing them directly to the mouth. These particles will then get digested in special structures called food vacuoles, which are full of digestive enzymes. They’re basically primitive stomachs! You can see some small green dots inside the Stentor which are some algae trapped in those food vacuoles and are being digested.
The macro nucleus appears as small white bubbles linked together resembling beads on a string, they’re very clear in the second video, looking like Stentor wanted to dress up and wear a pearl necklace for a special occasion🥰. This macro nucleus contains DNA that is necessary for reproduction and regeneration. The bigger this unicellular organism is, the more copies of its whole genome it has. That way it can regenerate from small pieces when it gets damaged. Only a small piece of DNA is necessary to form a whole new healthy Stentor!
Video taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam adapter 🔬
References:
Miyake et al. (2001) "Defense function of pigment granules in Stentor coeruleus", Europ. J. Protistol. 37, pp. 77-88.
Slabodnick, Mark M et al. “The Macronuclear Genome of Stentor coeruleus Reveals Tiny Introns in a Giant Cell.” Current biology : CB vol. 27,4 (2017): 569-575
Slabodnick, Mark M., and Wallace F. Marshall. "Stentor coeruleus." Current Biology 2
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