Protozoa are considered good indicators of the treatment quality in activated sludge systems as they are sensitive to physical, chemical and operational processes. Therefore, it is possible to correlate the predominance of certain species or groups and several operational parameters of the plant. This work presents a semiautomatic image analysis procedure for the recognition of the stalked prot...

We tested whether mixotrophic ciliates are more resistant to solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) than heterotrophic ones because symbiotic algae can provide self-shading by cell matter absorption and eventually by direct UV screening from mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs). Sensitivity of a natural assemblage to solar radiation was tested in experiments in the original lake and in a more UV tran...

We investigated the dynamics of the microfauna community in activated sludge, with special reference to sludge bulking, in two parallel municipal wastewater treatment systems in Beijing, China over a period of 14 months. Annual cyclic changes in microfauna community structures occurred in both systems. RELATE analysis based on Spearman's Rank correlation indicated that microfauna community stru...

The millisecond stalk contraction of the sessile ciliate Vorticella convallaria is powered by energy from Ca(2+) binding to generate contractile forces of ∼10 nN. Its contractile organelle, the spasmoneme, generates higher contractile force under increased stall resistances. By applying viscous drag force to contracting V. convallaria in a microfluidic channel, we observed that the mechanical f...

Deviant genetic codes reported in ciliates share the same feature: one (UGA) or two (UAR) of the three canonical stop codons are translated into one particular amino acid. In many genera, such as Oxytricha, Paramecium, and Tetrahymena, UAR codons are translated into glutamine. UGA is translated into cysteine in Euplotes or into tryptophan in Colpoda inflata and Blepharisma americanum. Here, we ...