The effects of diet and cannibalism were assessed from changes in the bioluminescence potential of 2 speclvb of the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Protoperidinium fed 4 specles of red tide dinoflagellate prey and also maintained without added prey. The use of bioluminescence as a sensitive indicator of nutritional status and feeding was explored. The bioluminescence of Protoperidinium cf. diverge...

BACKGROUND Interrelationships among dinoflagellates in molecular phylogenies are largely unresolved, especially in the deepest branches. Ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences provide phylogenetic signals only at the tips of the dinoflagellate tree. Two reasons for the poor resolution of deep dinoflagellate relationships using rDNA sequences are (1) most sites are relatively conserved and (2) there are...

In many dinoflagellate species, the plastid genome has been proposed to exist as a limited number of single-gene minicircles, and many genes normally found in the plastid genome are nuclear-encoded. Unlike the nuclear-encoded plastid-directed gene products whose expression is often regulated by the circadian clock, little is known about expression of minicircle genes. Furthermore, even the plas...

Vulcanodinium rugosum, a recently described species, produces pinnatoxins. The IFR-VRU-01 strain, isolated from a French Mediterranean lagoon in 2010 and identified as the causative dinoflagellate contaminating mussels in the Ingril Lagoon (French Mediterranean) with pinnatoxin-G, was grown in an enriched natural seawater medium. We tested the effect of temperature and salinity on growth, pinna...

Protein trafficking pathways to plastids are directed by N-terminal targeting peptides. In plants this consists of a relatively simple transit peptide, while in organisms with secondary plastids (which reside within the endomembrane system) a signal peptide is appended to the transit peptide. Despite amino acid compositional differences between organisms, often due to nucleotide biases, the fea...

The potential for in situ turbulence to inhibit dinoflagellate population growth has been demonstrated by experimentally exposing dinoflagellate cultures to quantified shear flow. However, despite interest in understanding environmental factors that affect the growth of toxic dinoflagellates, little is known of the effect of shear on the growth of toxin-producing dinoflagellate species. Culture...

sarcheshmeh formation is one the lower cretaceous formations of the kopet-dagh basin in the ne of iran. an outcrop of this formation in the section of daddanlou village was studied palynologically. the study section, 248 meters thick includs gray marl and gray shale, with interbeded limestone. based on study of 135 slides of 27 samples taken from this formation showed the most of the samples co...

This study examined the sterol compositions of 102 dinoflagellates using clustering and cluster validation techniques, as a means of determining the relatedness of the organisms. In addition, dinoflagellate sterol-based relationships were compared statistically to 18S rDNA-based phylogenetic relationships using the Mantel test. Our results indicated that the examined dinoflagellates formed six ...

Marine phytoplankton cells grow in close association with a complex microbial associate community known to affect the growth, behavior, and physiology of the algal host. The relative scale and importance these effects compared to other major factors governing algal cell growth remain unclear. Using algal-bacteria co-culture models based on the toxic dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum, we test...

Portable light-baffled underwater photometers have been designed for the measurement of dinoflagellate bioluminescence by day and night. Maximal light emission is obtained by mechanical stimulation in a defined volume. The pump which stimulates the dinoflagellates also constantly replenishes the sample volume so that continuous measurements are possible. Evidence for both diurnal variation and ...