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The beating pattern of the flagellum of Euglena gracilis under altered gravity during parabolic flights
- Source :
- Journal of Plant Physiology. 167:41-46
- Publication Year :
- 2010
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2010.
-
Abstract
- The unicellular freshwater flagellate Euglena gracilis shows negative gravitactic behavior. Previous experiments have revealed that the orientation is most likely an active physiological process in which the beating pattern of the flagellum is controlled by gravity and mediated by a change in the calcium concentration inside the cell. In a signal transduction chain, the calcium signal activates a calmodulin, which in turn raises the concentration of cAMP. This alters the beating pattern of the flagellum; reorientation is therefore not a passive process driven by buoyancy. In a recent parabolic flight experiment (ESA 45th parabolic flight campaign), we observed the beating of the flagellum with a high-resolution light microscope. Transition from hyper g to microg as well as from microg to hyper g caused a change of the beating pattern of the flagellum, which confirmed the physiological nature of the process. In microg cells stopped moving the flagellum or tried to reorient, while in hyper g, the cells realigned consecutively. The reaction times for the flagellar responses in previous experiments are confirmed.
- Subjects :
- Euglena gracilis
Aircraft
Calmodulin
Physiology
Movement
ved/biology.organism_classification_rank.species
Gravitaxis
chemistry.chemical_element
Hypergravity
Plant Science
Flagellum
Calcium
Flagellate
Gravity, Altered
biology
Weightlessness
ved/biology
Anatomy
biology.organism_classification
chemistry
Flagella
biology.protein
Biophysics
Agronomy and Crop Science
Transduction (physiology)
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 01761617
- Volume :
- 167
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Plant Physiology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....2baf851a97e997fdea5e1ae6badb4632